December 2023 New Features and Product Enhancements

2023 has seen massive strides in new product launches, features and enhancements. If it wasn’t for the hardworking growers and packers contributing their insights into what would make their job easier alongside our diligent developers turning these ideas into reality, none of this would be possible.

We have a few more great enhancements and features to cap off this year, and couldn’t be more excited to share what 2024 has in store.

First, let’s take a look at what’s new with Spectre (for Hectre Orchard Management App enhancements and last month’s releases, please scroll further down).

Hectre’s Computer Vision AI – Spectre

Innovation Highlights:

Spectre For Stone Fruit

Release Date: 2024

We continually receive requests to create Spectre fruit sizing models for new crop types. The problems that Spectre solves are universal – every fruit producer and packer needs access to reliable fruit size data at the earliest possible time in the post-harvest process to support successful decision making.

We’re excited to share that Spectre for Stone Fruit is currently in development.

If you work with peaches, nectarines or plums, and would like to be one of the first to gain the benefits of Spectre for Stone Fruit, please contact our team.

Spectre For Cherries – Color

Released November – In your hands now!

Following the release of Spectre for Cherries Color, we’re pleased to report that Hectre customers have been gaining valuable information on the volume of cherries for each shade of red that are in their bins and totes.

Cherry color data is served up simultaneously with Spectre for Cherries Size data, and from exactly the same Spectre image (no extra photos required).

With the Chilean cherry season now in full swing, we’ve been seeing strong differentiation between the different shades of red, enabling producers to estimate what % of cherries belong to each color band. This data is being used to give objective feedback about picker performance – are they picking the right color? – and to forecast how many dark/premium cherries will be available for the pack and sales, compared to lower color cherries.

If you’ve been using Spectre to size your cherries, please reach out to your Customer Success rep or contact us here to enquire about gaining access to valuable cherry color data for your next season.

Spectre For Cherries S.A.

Released November – In your hands now!

A new Spectre for Cherry sizing model (Spectre For Cherries S.A.) has been developed and released to support the different tote varieties and tote/bin combinations that are used by the South American cherry industry.

Different tote shapes and totes within bins, are quite specific to markets such as Chile and Argentina. Having specific Spectre models means we can continue delivering our high levels of size and color accuracy.

Spectre Hand-Held Color Automation

Beta Access Now Available

One of our major releases during quarter 4, was Spectre Top Down Color Automation. Spectre Top Down Color Automation enables Hectre customers to gain accurate color information quicker than ever before using our automation technology.

Feedback from our Spectre Top Down Color Automation customers has been so positive, that we are now bringing the benefits of this technology to our Spectre Hand-Held customers.

A beta version of Spectre Hand-Held Color Automation is now available. If you would like access to the beta version, to gain an early feel before the next season, contact us here.

What does color automation mean?

Color parameters will be detected by Hectre’s Spectre AI technology and will be automatically selected, depending on what the current lighting conditions are, making capturing color data easier and more accurate than ever before.

Spectre for Color customers will be able to categorize fruit varieties into color families so that similar varieties can share the same configuration, cutting down setup time and improving consistency between similar varieties.
Spectre will automatically detect what the lighting condition is and apply this for color assessment, saving time and reducing manual error.
If a brand new lighting condition is detected for one of your varieties, an email will be automatically sent, prompting you to set up that missing parameter. You can then just hop into the Spectre dashboard and within a few minutes of receiving the email, you can add the new parameter. As soon as the new parameter is created, Spectre will go back and add color information to all groups with that missing parameter. Easy!
Color Automation eliminates the time and guesswork of choosing color parameters alongside the risk of human error by fully automating the selection of color parameters.

Here’s a video from Hectre’s Group Product Manager, Aaron with more detail on these automation enhancements

Spectre Color Grade

How powerful would it be to turn the valuable color data gained through Spectre for Color, into fruit grades, much like on an industrial grader machine?

With this future enhancement, you’ll be able to unlock this information by combining your color information into grades, helping to make your color information even more usable and relevant to your packing and growing operations.

We will be building on the foundational work from Spectre for Color Automation and Spectre for Cherries Color to bring more flexibility in how you set up your color parameters. You will be able to use multiple shades of red for your premium grades, as well as multiple different color scales like green and yellow for your Granny Smith / Golden Delicious varieties.

Spectre Color Grade is currently in the design phase. Please reach out to aaron@hectre.com if you would like more details, or if you wish to provide industry feedback as we build out this great new feature.

Hectre’s Orchard Management Software

Innovation Highlights:

New Mobile Functionality: Review Unassigned Bin/Buckets Summary

Expected Release Date: Mid December

Releasing this month, is another Hectre Orchard Management Software feature. This feature enables orchard supervisors to easily review summaries of unassigned bins and buckets that had been created.

With supervisors being able to view these summaries, they can accurately assign bins and buckets accordingly, improving their data accuracy. By doing so, they can avoid the time-consuming back-and-forth corrections typically required during payroll processing.

Professional Services To Optimize Your Orchard Operation

Growers, supervisors, office admins and payroll magicians, don’t always have the time, the team resource, or the specific experience required, to identify and put in place the special reports, data exports and customized information, that can help make their processes more efficient, enable them to access deeper insights, and support management and improvement decisions.

Hectre’s specialists can provide this expertize, just like an extension to your team, but without the ongoing cost. Pay for what you need, when you need it. Here are some examples of recent work our Professional Services team have helped customers with:

Generating custom data reports that deliver specific data points for decision making
Creating customized payroll exports to streamline the payroll process
Support with mass information editing for improved accuracy and time savings
Connecting Hectre’s real-time payroll, timesheet and harvest data straight into existing business intelligence tools to support more custom analysis and decision-making
And other specialized customization (we have the data experts and can identify what data can help you to solve a problem you’re working on)

If you’d like to discuss a problem or improvement you’re working on, get in touch!

Timesheet Editing – Straight Off The Dashboard!

Running payroll can be challenging, especially in the growing industry with all of its pay complexities. At Hectre, we’re committed to easing this load, which is why we have an entire team dedicated to this critical workstream.

2024 will see a new feature that enables Admins/Managers to edit timesheets directly in the Hectre dashboard, eliminating the need for back-and-forth with supervisors and corrections in the Hectre mobile app. This enhancement will support Hectre customers to streamline their payroll processes even further, saving you time and hassle.

Other Recent Releases

Spectre Top Down Color Automation

Color automation was delivered to Spectre Top Down customers in October meaning that color parameters will be detected by Hectre’s Spectre AI technology and will be automatically selected, depending on what the current lighting conditions are, making capturing color data easier and more accurate than ever before.

If you’re using Spectre Top Down, but have yet to take advantage of color automation, contact your Customer Success rep today, or send us an email here and we’ll get you set up.

Fully Automated Spectre Top Down Solution

The combination of Hectre’s new Color Automation tool, with our exciting Spectre Top Down Automation solution, means you can now gain fruit size and color data straight off the truck, without typing or clicking on anything in the desktop app.

Spectre Top Down can be triggered using your existing processes – for example scanning a barcode, or pressing a button in your ERP. If you build a light integration with our Spectre Top Down Automation API, the details will be automatically loaded into Hectre’s Spectre Top Down, and your Spectre recordings will automatically start and stop. No need to press a single key or click the mouse once inside Spectre Top Down.

Contact us here, or contact your Hectre Customer Success rep to see if Automated Spectre Top Down is right for you.

Spectre For Android

Spectre for Android has officially been released, providing the same accurate size and color data at scale that you’ve been used to on iPhones and iPads.

We’ve already been seeing some fantastic feedback coming from growers and packers now using Spectre on their Android devices. If your a current Spectre customer and have an Android device you’d like to scan with:

Simply go to the Google Play Store
Download the Hectre App and login with your existing account
Start scanning with Spectre

If you need a hand getting Spectre for Android setup, contact us here.

NZAPI RPIN Feature

New Zealand apple and pear growers have been mapping their Hectre orchard structure with the NZAPI structure (RPIN, Production Site, Management Area, Variety) using our self-service mapping tool bringing simple integration between Hectre bin tickets and packhouse software.

This new Hectre mapping tool will also play a pivotal role in the upcoming release of the new Hectre Spray Module. As CropSure relies on the NZAPI orchard structure for their verification and certification processes, your Hectre orchard structure will be matched, meaning you’ll be all set up for spray certification requirements as well.

Click here to learn how to use this simple mapping tool, or contact us for any assistance.