Units bought,
units burned
Yaka tokens, a borehole pump, water trucked in for the dry season. Most farms know what they paid for water and power and have no idea what they use, until the units run out on a Sunday or a drinker leaks for a week. Famu works it out from what you already record.
Worked out from the last token and how fast the brooder has been burning units.
900 litres a day across 3,600 layers. A number you can compare from week to week.
Last week's water, against the farm's own usual. Often a leak or a tap left open.
You either buy it or read it
Famu already knows the usual answer for each kind of meter.
Add a meter for each supply: grid power, solar, a generator, mains water, a borehole, or water that is delivered. Then say how it is known. Famu fills in the usual answer and the unit: Yaka is bought in kWh, a borehole is read in m³, a generator's hour meter is read in hours.
If a meter serves one place, such as a layer house, a paddock or a plot, say which. Its comparisons then count only what is in there, not the whole farm.
I buy units
Prepaid power, trucked water. Each time you buy, record it as an expense and tick the meter, with how many units you got. Famu works out how long they last.
I read the meter
A dial somebody reads. Tap Reading and type the number. Tick "new or reset meter" if it was replaced or rolled back to zero.
How long the last token will last
Nobody reads a Yaka meter, so Famu estimates it from your own buying.
Every purchase runs until the next one, and that gives a rate: 120 kWh that lasted 12 days is 10 kWh a day. Famu averages your recent purchases and takes that rate off the latest one, day by day. When three days or fewer are left, it warns you to top up.
It needs at least two finished purchases before it guesses. With only one, a countdown would be a guess dressed up as a fact, so it shows nothing. Move the days on below.
Compared with your own normal
40 kWh a day is a lot for a light, and nothing for a hatchery. Only your history knows which.
Famu compares the latest stretch of use with the average of the ones before it, up to six of them and never fewer than three. At 1.6 times the usual or more, it says the meter is running high. That is often a leak, a burst pipe or a drinker left running.
A jump more than 14 days old is history you have already lived through, so it is shown but not raised as an alert. Stretches longer than 60 days are left out of the average, because they say nothing about this week. Leave a tap running below.
Per bird, per cow, per acre
900 litres a day means nothing on its own. 0.25 litres per bird does. The meter's page divides what it uses each day by whatever your farm keeps: birds, animals, dogs, litres of milk or acres planted, counting only the pen it serves if it serves one. It is worked out fresh each time, because the flock you divide by changes every week.
With the money side, the page also shows what a unit really costs, averaged over every purchase where you gave both the price and the number of units, and what the meter has cost in a period.
The rules
The purchase is the expense
A unit purchase is an ordinary expense with the meter ticked. Nothing is recorded twice, and Reports counts it once.
Workers see units, not shillings
By default a worker can see the meters and record readings. Prices and costs show only to someone who can read expenses.
A backwards dial is a typo
A reading lower than the one before, without "new or reset meter" ticked, is skipped rather than counted as negative use.
One rule, two places
The warning on the meter's page and the alert in your notifications use the same thresholds, so you are never shown a red badge you were not told about.
Solar is not nagged
A solar meter buys nothing, so Famu never asks it for purchases. You record it to see what the farm makes and uses.
An estimate from your habits
What it does not do
Days left is an estimate from how you have bought before, not a reading of the meter. If the brooder lamps go on for a new flock, the first few days will burn faster than Famu expects.
A purchase recorded without the number of units still counts as money spent, but it cannot tell Famu how long anything lasts.
Earns its keep for
- Brooders, incubators and cold rooms on prepaid power
- Boreholes and pumps feeding houses or irrigation
- Farms buying trucked water in the dry season
Does little for
- A farm on a flat monthly water bill with no meter
- Rain-fed crops with no pump