Free Grow Software!

themadgrower said:

This software looks like a almost direct copy of The Grow Assistant www.growassistant.com

It's nice that your software is free though. But since I loath Windows and only use Mac I'll be happy to stick with them.

It's not free but it works much better than this software, It looks more streamlined as well.

But like I said, great effort, keep up the good work.

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Glad you found something that works for you. Certainly there is a market for the customer support/customizations GA offers, but I would imagine that the only people who really care about that are people doing this as a business. I'm not personally and I think there are a significant number of similar people out there.

If GA was less $ for the personal license, I would not had even considered working on this project. $35 is way too much for something when I can easily make a suitable substitute for free. If I could get a personal GA license for ~$5 minus all the business modules, I would have done it too. Though, if they want to charge an arm and a leg for their software, you'd think they could at least have a working support forum. The link on their overview page is dead. Doesn't exactly leave you with a good feeling about dropping the cash.

Edit: Appearantly it's just that link that's dead. Seems like their forum is up.

Well said Densebuds.
I'm very pleased with what you guys are doing. but since opinions are flying here I feel like contributing my own.
Funny I loathe Apple since they started acting evil and trying to license their hardware so you don't actually own it but are just a licensee of it.
The cult around jobs and the whole smugness apple users convey just annoys the hell out of me. I'm not a fan of windows myself but it gets the job done
as well as apples at a 1/4 to 1/2 of the price and it works well when you know what the hell you are doing. Apple to me is for people who can't think for themselves
and don't want to.
Keep up the great work and I believe developing this on windows is a wise decision since it is the most widely used platform regardless of what any
apple fanboi wants to believe.

thanks for the support. I don't have anything against Apples aside from their price really. I love my iPhone. Just happened to work a few years as a .NET developer so that's what I can use in my free time w/o having to learn a new language. I'm sure we'll eventually find someone who is interested in porting it.

It seems there is some cool features like charts and graphs in the other program, and a bit more polished. But HerbIQ is still improving, and is amazing for free. Thanks again, keep up good work and look forward to the next update.

Ya, reporting is one of the next things to tackle I think. Hopefully it will be as easy as plugging in another open source reporting component that can read HerbIQs data.

Just downloaded and installed. Starting to tinker around. Is there an online or pdf manual for it that gives instruction?

And dont let the critics get you down about having similar features to other growing software. Those that criticize, ask yourselves this -- why WOULDNT most grow software have similar features? I mean, its just a plant, so there's only so much you can possibly do in software for a specific thing. In time as software continues to develop you'll see things branch off so each company has their little niche. $35 for a personal license for 250 records? Bah. Log something every day in there for just one harvest and you'll use it up in a few months. Free = great and Open Source means free = SUPER great! If you want to improve it, just code it and submit it

Loving it.

Possibly add something for waterings?

machnak said:

Possibly add something for waterings?

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What I do is I've defined some events that I use to record each time I water. Like "Water", "Nutes (1/2)","Nutes","Flush" then you just add the right event and you can track it that way. You can then use the custom status page to give a quick view of the last time you watered all your plants.

researchkitty said:

Just downloaded and installed. Starting to tinker around. Is there an online or pdf manual for it that gives instruction?

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We keep meaning to put something official together and I think we have a few knowledge articles here and there, but that's it. Feel free to ask for suggestions on the best way to use certain features.

researchkitty said:

And dlont let the critics get you down about having similar features to other growing software. Those that criticize, ask yourselves this -- why WOULDNT most grow software have similar features? I mean, its just a plant, so there's only so much you can possibly do in software for a specific thing. In time as software continues to develop you'll see things branch off so each company has their little niche. $35 for a personal license for 250 records? Bah. Log something every day in there for just one harvest and you'll use it up in a few months. Free = great and Open Source means free = SUPER great! If you ant to improve it, just code it and submit it

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Exactly

machnak said:

Loving it.

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Glad you like it! Thx

My computer is getting old, and sometimes i have issues. I am worried it is going to die sometime soon. Since i am not at all good with computers, what items would i need to save to a flash drive so that is this computer does die, i will have the proper files to download herbiq on my next computer and have all my plant info?? Thanks.

IAmKrazy2 said:

My computer is getting old, and sometimes i have issues. I am worried it is going to die sometime soon. Since i am not at all good with computers, what items would i need to save to a flash drive so that is this computer does die, i will have the proper files to download herbiq on my next computer and have all my plant info?? Thanks.

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The only file you need is Data.zip, you can use any previous version with any future version, it supports upgrading directly you don't have to follow any upgrade path.

I have a question, today is the next day and my Home page won't refresh the days. Everything is the same as yesterday Am I doing something wrong? Also, how do I add drop down tasks from custom status?

Thanks again, other than the days and drop menus everything is working to the T. Thanks!



*EDIT* Could the days be because I entered the info at around 3PM yesterday? Should I wait until Today to see if needs a full 24 hours to change?

researchkitty said:

Just downloaded and installed. Starting to tinker around. Is there an online or pdf manual for it that gives instruction?

And dont let the critics get you down about having similar features to other growing software. Those that criticize, ask yourselves this -- why WOULDNT most grow software have similar features? I mean, its just a plant, so there's only so much you can possibly do in software for a specific thing. In time as software continues to develop you'll see things branch off so each company has their little niche. $35 for a personal license for 250 records? Bah. Log something every day in there for just one harvest and you'll use it up in a few months. Free = great and Open Source means free = SUPER great! If you want to improve it, just code it and submit it

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We will have documentation in the 0.3 release, that's part of what is holding up the release. We are starting to implement some advanced features finally so you should start seeing updated documentation every release too on the features we are adding. We just got a new team member too, a graphic artist with over 20 years of experience, so plan on seeing a much better looking herb.iq in the near future

Honestly you can screw the written documentation these days. Just do a "Quick Start" video and a "Detailed WTF Every checkbox does" video on YouTube.com. I bet it'd take you a half hour total to produce edit and post the quick start tutorial. Hell, if you write one I'll do it in my pretty voice!

Ok so the days work fine, my error. Now how do I enter fields into the Custom drop down menus?

machnak said:

Ok so the days work fine, my error. Now how do I enter fields into the Custom drop down menus?

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Create some events for a plant or two. You should then see the event name available in the custom status page. If we don't have a sheet for this, I'll expand on my explanation later today and make something we could include in the documentation.

researchkitty said:

Honestly you can screw the written documentation these days. Just do a "Quick Start" video and a "Detailed WTF Every checkbox does" video on YouTube.com. I bet it'd take you a half hour total to produce edit and post the quick start tutorial. Hell, if you write one I'll do it in my pretty voice!

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Love this idea. Will make a test one in the next couple days for Custom Status tab.

This will evolve the world of growing!
+rep

I found a problem or bug when trying to delete pictures I uploaded to the software.

Here is a screen shot.