Velos 2023.1.SR1 Dairy Farming

This Nedap Velos software version contains new and improved functionalities that provide new solutions, add valuable options to existing solutions and further increase the ease of use of Velos.

Nedap FarmControl

Identification

• Added a new behaviour component for cow identification in a tandem parlour. This behaviour component is called ‘Tandem ID’.

• Improved the identification page. Disabled antennas are hidden by default. They can be made visible by the button ‘Show disabled antennas’:

  

  The page will only show a green bar with "All antennas are ok" after the page is completely loaded and there are no antennas with errors. The page will only show a red coloured bar with "Some antennas have errors" if there are antennas with errors i.e., the antenna shows two red tuning dots. If an antenna is just a little out of tune, then this will be shown with an orange dot instead of a red dot.

• Fixed an issue in the rotor identification where places in use were not updated with new cows. Not updating a position should only happen with cows that go for a second round on the rotor. This happened when a cow was first detected by the sensor and then by the antenna.

• Fixed an issue in rotor identification where some animals were not fed in the parlor.

• Fixed an issue on the page ‘Tags not linked’ where the default group/pen was selected instead of the animal’s group/pen.

Traffic

• Improved separation of cows with a heat attention. On the page ‘Settings > Separation rules’ an extra option has been added to not separate the cows anymore after they have been handled. For example: An inseminated cow that still has the heat attention active will then no longer be separated if the option ‘repeat in separation period’ is checked. This new option is only visible if a rule is created based on attention type heat attention.

  

• Fixed an issue that, in rare cases, could cause the list of animals to separate to be empty.

Feeding

• The default sort order on the Feed balance page used to be ‘animal number’ ascending. This has been modified in ‘remaining balances of yesterday’ descending.

• Fixed an issue on the feed balance page where sorting the table on the column 'Last detected' did not put the locations in the correct order.

Nedap CowControl

Heat Detection and Health Monitoring

• Added new report ‘Calendar events’.  

  

  The report shows the events of the selected type.

  

• Life number is added to heat, health, and calendar attention pages. ‘Life No’ is added as column next to the column ‘Animal’. This column is hidden by default but can be enabled by the user.

  

  ‘Life No’ has also been added to reports for heat, calendar, farm and health and management. Here again, the ‘Life No’ is added as column next to the column ‘Animal’ and hidden by default.

• Improved the page that can be reached via the link ‘Show attentions’ in the ‘Heat detection’ widget on the dashboard. All three tabs now show the columns ‘Animal’, ‘Life No’, ‘Group/pen’, ‘Lact. days’, ‘Heat days’, ‘Insem. days’, ‘#Insem.’ and ‘Pregnant’.

  

• Fixed an issue in seasonal breeding where the ‘no insemination’ calendar attention would not be calculated automatically when set in the future.

Cow Locating

• The monitor page for behaviour components of type ‘Positioning beacons setup’ now has an option to show all calibration points. It will show all calibration points on the map which can be inspected individually by clicking on the calibration point

  
  
  

• On the page ‘Settings > Calibration’ there are sometimes small areas that are difficult or impossible to calibrate (for example behind a cubicle). These small areas do not really contribute. Therefore, a calibration square is only marked red when it is for more than 50% in a cell.

Nedap MilkingControl

• Improved addressing of InTouch devices. On the page ‘Settings > Parlour configuration’ a new button ‘Set logical addresses of InTouch devices’ has been added.

  

  Once this button is pressed the address to start with can be specified.

  

  After pressing the button ‘Start addressing’ all InTouch devices will show ‘Address’. This shows that the InTouch devices are in addressing mode. Push the main button on each InTouch once and it will receive the next available address. The InTouch will show this address in its display. The new addressing is also shown on the parlour configuration page and it is made final after submitting the changes on this page.

• Improved feedback to the user when adding a separation rule on the InTouch. Next to the indication of the cow separation LED above the button, the display will display ‘SEP ON’ or ‘SEP OFF’ to indicate if the cow on this milking position will be separated or not.

• On a rotor parlour equipped with InTouch devices it is now possible to stop milking automatically if the rotor has almost completed one round. This can be specified on the page ‘Settings > Intouch settings’. Check ‘Take of at rotor position’ and specify ‘Position before entrance’ to automatically take off the specified number op positions before completing one round.

  

• Added a new behaviour component of type ‘Rotor actions’. This behaviour component can give a signal to the rotor by means of a digital output. This signal is an indication for the rotor that it has to stop. This can be used to stop a rotor if the milking of a cow has not finished yet if this cow has almost reached the exit of the rotor.

  

• Added a new behaviour component of type ‘Wash controller’. This behaviour component can receive a signal from an external wash controller by means of a digital input. This signal is an indication for Velos to put all InTouch devices in state ‘Washing’

  

• Improved updating the bulk tank information on the page ‘Settings > SmartFlow settings’. If a delivery period is specified or modified, the measured yield of that period is shown in the pop-up.

  

• As the SmartFlow cannot measure conductivity, conductivity values will be hidden everywhere in the Velos user interface and on all Velos reports when using SmartFlow.

• Fixed an issue that caused the parlor monitor page to load very slow.

• Fixed an issue where the expected milk yield could not be calculated after modifying the milking times (Settings > Milking > Milking times).

General

• Nedap constantly updates the software to prevent security vulnerabilities. In this version some 3rd party libraries have been updated because of this.

• Improved the update process for ethernet devices to make the update process faster.

• New installations with a Nedap license get the option to sign up for Nedap Now when installing Velos. The Velos setup wizard will handle a correct setup of the Velos installation in combination with Nedap Now.

• Improved communication with V-Packs.

• It is now possible to deregister a Velos installation from vpu-online. On the page Settings > Network > VPU-online click on the domain name and the page displayed will give an option to ‘Deregister’. Only users that have permissions to ‘Edit system settings’ in their user role (Settings > Network > Roles and permissions) can deregister an installation.

  

• An ethernet devices being disconnected from the VPU is now detected much faster.

• The pages ‘Maintenance > Devices > V-packs’ and‘Maintenance > Monitor > Behaviour components’ now have a settings button next to the search bar so the corresponding settings page is easier to reach.

  

• In widgets with a circle, the text in the circle is aligned better with the circle.

• The queues for sending data from Velos to the cloud have increased in size so they can hold at least 4 days of data for a 4000 animal farm.

• Fixed an issue that would cause the Maintenance > Behaviour components & Settings > Behaviour components pages to load slowly for behaviour components on secondary VPUs.

• Fixed an issue that caused service users being unable to change their password. The first item on the service checklist is Change password. The mandatory ‘first name’ and ‘last name’ are now both set to ‘service’ by default.

• Fixed an issue where the time zone displayed in footer was not equal to the time zone selected on the date time page. This was only the case for used time zones like GMT+1 or GMT-1. Probably not many users have seen this issue as Nedap always advises users to select the time zone by city name.

• Fixed an issue where the main VPU retries to update the secondary too soon causing the update to fail. This happens occasionally when the secondary VPU is of type VP8001.

• Fixed an issue where the IP address of the VPU was displayed as 0.0.0.0. This happened on the VPU display as well as on the V-Pack page.

• Fixed an issue where the firmware of V-Packs was updated even if was already up to date.

Firmware

New firmware has been added for the following V-Packs:

• VP1001 – 3.01.04

  • Updated the tag reader.

• VP1801 – 3.05.55

  • Updated the tag reader.

• VP4102 – 3.06.26

  • Added support for SmartFlow.

System requirements

Velos version

• An installation needs to run on version 2021.1 or newer to be able to update to this version. Make sure to update to version 2021.1 first before installing this version.

Taurus

• This version is compatible with Taurus 2020.2 (5.101.7.0) and Taurus 2023.1 (5.143.93.0).

Mobile device versions:

• iOS 14 or later

• Android 5.0 or later

Supported browsers:

• Chrome

• Edge