IQ4 Product Development Focus: Ease of Use, Speed and Efficiency

In 2020, the IQ4 product development team made over 70 different enhancements to improve user experience. The team eliminated many redundancies, automated certain tasks and increased the visibility of key system information. We also launched many new features users have requested and fixed many bugs. “User feedback is critically important to our development efforts and we were able to make great strides on IQ4 improvements with our users' help,” said Rick Malkin, Central Control Product Manager. “This has led to a more robust product that improves the users’ ability to manage large irrigation systems effectively and efficiently.”

Here are a few improvement highlights:

Visibility to Simple ET data and Runtime Adjustments

Simple ET automatically adjusts runtime for the system and IQ4 makes these adjustments behind the scenes. Recent enhancements give users more visibility to the ET data being used to make these adjustments and how it affects the runtimes for the next irrigation cycle. Having visibility to this information also aids in troubleshooting, if a runtime appears to be wrong users can refer back to the ET data to see if that is the cause.

Improved Controller Setup Experience

Now, when users establishes a new field controller in IQ4, IQ4 will automatically perform a reverse sync to retrieve that information to save any programming already in the controller. Automatically performing this function eliminates the possibility that users could delete any programming information in the controller unintentionally such as decoder/IVM addresses.

Improved Search Filters for Easier Access

To enable access to information faster, new search filters allow you to search on: dates, sprinkler type, site name, landscape type, start times and other parameters. Within the search function, you are also able to perform actions, like starting or stopping irrigation.

Speed Improvements

Speed improvements address the speed and connection issues users were experiencing

40% reduction in login time
50% reduction in sync and log retrieval times
50% reduction in report creation
66% faster controller connections
75% reduction in failed connections to controllers

Check the IQ Version History page to keep updated on new features and bug fixes.