VuSitu Graphing Assistant Is Here! Our Experts Share Details

In-Situ is pleased to announce that the most requested addition to the VuSitu app has arrived. Our new Graphing Assistant makes it easy to visually interpret data for better results.

To help explain how it works and who will find it most useful, we sat down with Software and Solutions Product Manager Matt Trumbo and Application Development Managers Kerry Caslow, Adam Hobson and Brock Houston.

In-Situ: This is exciting, Matt. Tell us why it was important to add a graphing function to VuSitu.

Matt: We want to listen to our customers, and this has been a top requested feature for a long time. What we hear about in HydroVu that will also be true for VuSitu Graphs is that a visual representation of the data is a great way to see trends and link them together.

When you can view multiple series of data at the same time, it’ll be easy to look at it and see, whoa, something just happened. Like, both my DO and my temperature did something weird at the same time.

In-Situ: Who will find it most useful?

Matt: There seem to be three main groups who were most interested. The largest and most vocal is the spot-checking group. They want to see when a value has stabilized, especially temperature. They throw a hot or cold probe into a different water environment, and they want to know when the instrument has stabilized and is ready to take a reading.

We also had interest from people who do a lot of pumping tests. They wanted to be able to watch and see that things were going as expected. And then a smaller group, perhaps the most technical users, are people who do a lot of profiling, both horizontal and vertical. They wanted to be able to see a live representation as they move the probe through the water and look at all those parameters.

In-Situ: Kerry, you work with a lot of folks doing surface water monitoring. Do you see this making a difference for those doing spot checking and profiling?

Kerry: Absolutely. I was excited to hear this feature was going to be available for a lot of the reasons Matt mentioned. Stabilization is a big one. If you’re collecting a spot sample, you can watch the graph until you see things stabilize and then click the “collect data point” button, without having to watch a lot of numbers.

For profiling, in a reservoir for example, you need to know the water quality from the top to the bottom. You’ll be logging at a certain time interval, sending your sonde down into the water and watching the data as you collect that profile. It’s going to be a lot easier to see on a graph where you might need to take a sample or where changes are taking place in the body of water.

In-Situ: Brock, given your focus on coastal monitoring, how do you see this coming into play there?

Brock: It’s a big time-saver. A lot of coastal applications require a lot of time up front just to get out to the site. And using tabular data to watch your profile change or to let your instrument stabilize isn’t fun. You really have to watch it and do some mental math, so a simple graph will be much easier to use.

And at the end of the day when you have your data, you want to know you’re getting the data you expect. you don’t want to get back to the lab and find out your readings are subpar.

Kerry: I can relate to what Brock’s saying. Personally, I can remember only so many numbers as I’m watching them click on the screen over however many seconds. That’s why the graphing is so fantastic, because you have the culmination of all those numbers instead of having to remember them.

In-Situ: Adam, as the groundwater expert, why are people who do aquifer tests going to love this feature?

Adam: It’s a great way to present data when there’s too much of it to take it all in. And do it in a smaller amount of space. I see it really coming into play with slug tests. Often, you’ll run multiple slug tests where you’re going to see a change in water level initiated by the slug, and then the water level will come back down to a static starting point. If you can see that in a graph, then you know when you can start the next test, as opposed to remembering a number. So very similar—save time in the field; make better decisions.

Same thing with pumping tests: You can see changes over longer time periods depending how long the test is running, both at pumping wells and observation wells. You can also compare parameters. That’s important during a pumping test, where you may see water level changing but also temperature or maybe pH, if you’re monitoring that at the same time, and see how they correlate.

Matt: You’ll also see when something’s wrong. Especially in a pumping test. If this is moving and that’s not moving, stop everything. 

Adam: Or if the slope of a line is worrisome, it’s hard to see that just watching the numbers change. But projecting where that line might be headed can be helpful.

In-Situ: Sounds like it’s going to make a big difference.

Matt: In the field, yes. But it’s important to remember that this won’t change how you generate graphs and files for reporting. This is just a different visualization—a snapshot.

Adam: Right, the graph isn’t saved; it’s just a graphing of live data to assist with decisions you make and actions you take.

Matt: This gets into the exciting product management discovery that there were really two sets of needs around graphs across almost all users: Sometimes you just need a quick visual representation of when to start caring about your data, or stop caring, or stop everything or start everything—all the things we just discussed, that’s what this feature helps with.

Then there’s the need to make carefully curated graph with the exact Y axis labels and X axis limits to represent the data. That’s where HydroVu comes in. They’re two different things, and I think customers are going to have a better time using this feature because we’re not trying to make it do both.

We’re really excited for our customers to try it out and give us their feedback on how it works for them.