You will find on this page answers for the issues that users of the iButterfly Explorer and iBiodiversity Count mobile apps have faced and queries that they have raised with the creators of the apps. If you do not find answers, solutions, fixes, etc., to your issues/queries, then write to us with your observations, and we will try to address your queries and add the solutions to this page. You can contact us for this purpose at:
Editors of the Butterflies of India website
Indian Foundation for the Butterflies Trust
Phone: +91 6362-512-292 (also on WhatsApp)
GENERAL FAQs THAT APPLY TO BOTH THE APPS
- Where may I find the apps for download and find information about the apps?: You can download the apps and read about their features and other descriptions following this page. Links to download the apps from Google Play Store and Apple App Store will be provided once the apps are available on those repositories. Further information is available in the app-specific FAQs below.
- I have downloaded the apps but pages, species lists, and other content, do not load completely or properly. What should I do to fix this issue?: Both mobile apps fetch data from the Butterflies of India website (this website) when the apps are installed and opened for the first time. Hence, you have to open the apps for the first time when you have a good internet connection, at which point the apps start fetching species lists, photos, and textual information, for species pages, information pages, etc. While you have good internet connection, click around to see whether the pages and species lists are loading correctly (including the photos/icons and text). Once this is done, then the apps will work offline as well. We recommend that you install the apps a week or two before your field trips where you might be offline, or at least a few days in advance, so that you will not face any issues when you are in the field.
- Should I create separate user accounts for each app? Can I use my Butterflies of India website user account?: All the eight websites under the Biodiversity Atlas – India web platform, and the new iButterfly Explorer and iBiodiversity Count apps, use the same user account database. Therefore, you do not need to create a new user account to use the apps. If you already have an account on any one of the BioAtlasIndia websites (e.g., this Butterflies of India website), then the same login details may be used on any other website under BioAtlasIndia and the new apps. Please do not create multiple accounts. By maintaining a single account, you will keep all your observations (photo-based observations as well as count/checklist data) under a single account from which you can access all your data easily.
- During the account registration process, the apps/websites require several personal details such as email address, mobile phone number, social media handle, and so on. Why is this information required, and how will be used?: Personal email address and mobile phone number are required to help recover passwords. Along with a social media handle, they also help contact the registered users if their observations need to be verified, or if someone wants to contact them for various but specific non-commercial reasons (e.g., to take permission to use their contributed, copyrighted photographs for use in educational material or a book, etc.; also see below).
- Will my personal data such as email address, phone number, etc., be protected? Is this information secure, or may it be used for commercial activity?: Personal information from the accounts of users will never be sold to any party. The apps and websites are created and maintained by non-commercial, non-profit organisations, who will not give away your personal information for any commercial or non-commercial activities. This information will also not be used for solicitation of donations, announcements of educational, research or conservation activities, etc. The only specific circumstance under which a user's personal email address and phone number may be shared with a third party is if publishers, their agents or authors of a book or other publications wish to contact the contributing photographer/naturalist to take permission for the user's copyrighted material that is available on the websites/apps. This is done purely in the larger interest of putting the two parties in touch for this specific, good-intentioned positive outcome. Read further about data privacy on the 'Data Contribution and Privacy Statement' page.
- Can I cancel my account and delete my personal data from the apps/websites if and when I wish to do so?: Yes, accounts may be cancelled and personal data deleted if users want this. If an individual contributor wishes at some point to cancel their account and delete personal information (email address, mobile phone number, social media handle and other personal information associated with the user account), then they can do so by writing an email to the editors of the website or to the Indian Foundation for Butterflies Trust, or by calling/messaging the Trust on the phone (+91 6362-512-292; through messages on WhatsApp or equivalent). Following such an email/message request, the editors and/or the Trust will delete your account from the backend of the websites/apps, at which point all your personal information will be deleted from the system and you or the admins will not be able to access your account or personal information thereafter. The expected normal timeline for cancellation of an account once the request is received is approximately two weeks. If you do not receive a response to your request within a few working days (sometimes we are in the field, away from the phone and internet access), then feel free to send reminders and use all the means of contact listed above. We take such requests seriously and respectfully, will respond, and will do as you wish, in a reasonable amount of time.
- I have installed the apps on my mobile phone and I use them regularly. Do I need to update them once in a while? What should I do to update them?: We update contents of both the apps on a regular basis, especially that of the iButterfly Explorer app, so you should update your installations at some intervals. The updates will give you access to the latest curated content, including textual information, species lists, and photographs on species pages. Further information, including on updating your installations of the apps, is given below under the individual apps.
FAQs SPECIFICALLY RELATING TO THE iBUTTERFLY EXPLORER APP
- Where may I find the iButterfly Explorer app for download and find information about the app?: You can read about this app and download and install the app from this page: https://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/IBExplorer-mobile-app. Links for the Android version on Google Play Store and iOS version on Apple App Store will be provided here shortly, once the apps are available on those online repositories.
- I have downloaded the app but photos, text and distributional maps do not load completely or properly. What should I do to fix this issue?: The iButterfly Explorer app is a data-rich app that is illustrated with an abundance of carefully curated reference images (a total of nearly 8,000 images). The textual information and images are drawn from the Butterflies of India website (this website). Once the app is installed, it downloads the India pack, and starts to populate content to the landing pages and species pages. This requires that the app be used initially when users are online and have a good internet connection. Once the content is downloaded, then the app can be used online or offline. Therefore, we recommend that you install the app a week or two before you do any field work, or at least a few days in advance of field work where users might go offline, and use the app on a regular basis. If you have clicked around for a few days, visited various species pages, etc., allowing sufficient time for the content to download, then the app will work fine offline. If you close the app or restart your mobile phone during this process, then you can restart the content download by going to: Settings > My Downloads, and then clicking on 'Update' and 'Download'. Indeed, after the app is functioning properly, you should still click on 'Update' and 'Download' periodically so that the latest content is downloaded for your offline use. This is because we are continually updating the content, including species taxonomy, textual information and curated photographs used on species pages. Periodically clicking on 'Update' keeps the content available on your copy of the mobile app in sync with the latest curated content for the app as well as on the Butterflies of India website. In short, for the app to work offline without an issue, use the app sufficiently before the field trip while you are online, and then afterwards keep using the app as frequently as you can to keep it updated and functioning efficiently. This is a normal expectation for any apps of this nature.
- I have installed the app on my mobile phone and I use it regularly. Do I need to update it once in a while? What should I do to update it?: We update contents of this app on a regular basis, so you should update your installation at some intervals. Our frequent updates will give you access to the latest curated content, including textual information and photographs on species pages. This is especially critical in the next year or two when we will keep on adding information about the 'Status, Distribution and Habitat' and 'Larval Host Plants' of all the Indian butterfly species, and update species image galleries with the most informative images that keep getting published on the Butterflies of India website. To keep your installations updated with the latest curated information, in your app, go to 'Settings > My Downloads > Update' to update textual content on species and information pages. Go to 'Settings > My Downloads > Download' to download new images that may have been curated and included in the app since your last installation (the images will also get updated as you keep browsing species pages). You will need access to good internet connection to update your installations. Update your installations at least a few days before your field trips when you have good internet access.
- How does AI-assisted identification through the iButterfly Explorer app work?: The prediction accuracy and overall performance of machine-learning and AI algorithms rely on the quality and quantity of data on which the algorithms are trained. These algorithms learn by performing image analysis with respect to the names provided for each overall phenotype. Thus, if the initial training datasets used are large, then the prediction accuracy is high. We have already taken care of this for common and uncommon species since we have a large number (30-40 to over 1,000) of correctly identified, peer-reviewed images available for these species on the Butterflies of India website. Rare species have fewer images available (typically between 0 and 5), so the algorithm has not learnt those species very well. Hence, for rare species, the prediction accuracy is low and the app may offer a wrong prediction or show multiple species in its prediction. This situation will improve as the Butterflies of India website receives more submissions and the algorithm can subsequently be trained adequately even on rare species when the number of reference images increases to more than 20-30. Ideally, the training dataset should contain hundreds, if not thousands, of images of each species for the AI-assisted species prediction to be highly accurate. You can help improve the website as well as the mobile app by contributing your observations to the Butterflies of India website. This will increase the amount of information that is available to make these community resources that much better.
- While using the app, how can I improve prediction accuracy of species identification?: Prediction accuracy of species identification relies on the following parameters: (a) quality and quantity of the initial training dataset (see the last point); (b) quality of the image submitted for identification query: to address this, try to use the best image that you have, i.e., an image that is well-lit and at an angle where markings of the butterfly can be seen clearly; (c) the size of the butterfly in the query frame: to address this, zoom in on the butterfly so that it occupies as much of the query frame as possible. If you are using a photograph showing the upper side of the butterfly (that is, both right and left wings are visible), then you can zoom in until the query frame is filled with wings from only one side (remember that information content on one side of the wings is almost the same as that on the other side, so wings from one side are sufficient for the purpose of identification); (d) location: to address this, choose at least an approximate location where the photograph was taken. Using location along with the photograph improves prediction accuracy by a percentage or two, which might make a difference for identification of rare species.
You can help improve the website as well as the mobile app by contributing your observations to the Butterflies of India website. This will increase the amount of information that is available to make these community resources that much better.
FAQs SPECIFICALLY RELATING TO THE iBIODIVERSITY COUNT APP
- Where may I find the iBiodiversity Count app for download and find information about the app?: You can read about this app and download and install the app from this page: https://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/IBCount-mobile-app. Links for the Android version on Google Play Store and iOS version on Apple App Store will be provided here shortly, once the apps are available on those online repositories.
- I have downloaded the app but the species list does not load. What should I do to fix this issue?: The iBiodiversity Count app is a simple app that helps you enter, manage and retrieve your count data (30-minute counts, daily checklists and regional checklists), but it depends on a few key online resources. It draws species lists that may be used in the counts/checklists from the Butterflies of India website (this website; and eventually it will do so from Moths of India and Odonata of India websites when those taxonomic modules are launched), for which it initially requires an internet connection. Therefore, after installation, users should launch the app while they have access to a good internet connection, log in, and then test the 30-min count and daily/regional checklists to familiaze themselves with how the app works, and for the app to download the species checklists. Once these functionalities are tested, then the app may be used offline. For this to happen and for the smooth functioning of the app offline, we recommend that users install and use the app a week or two before field work, or at least a few days before users go offline for field work.
- I have installed the app on my mobile phone and I use it regularly. Do I need to update it once in a while? What should I do to update it?: We update contents of this app during major version updates, but not frequently as we do for the iButterfly Explorer app. These updates include addition of new species, changes in species names (either genus-species combinations or common English names) as new taxonomic papers are published, and any edits on the 'About Us' page. Unlike the iButterfly Explorer app, you do not need to (and cannot) manually update this app. When you open the app after having closed it earlier, or after you restart your mobile phone, the app will update itself automatically and the latest curated content will be displayed in your app. You will need access to the internet for the app to update itself.