The New Ag Business

An outstanding article...

2011-04-01T15:56:00.000-07:00

Just a great article on TechCrunch on being a CEO. Horowitz hits the nail on the head.

Bottom line: there are a million ways to lose, but the only way to win is to keep showing up.

Maybe I need to paste this up on the wall for the darker days.

Firing a customer

2011-03-11T14:50:00.000-08:00

When you're a small company, you're always on the lookout for revenue. Every customer is critical, and you want to do everything you can to keep every single one.

Up to a point.

One thing I have learned in many years of business is the importance of knowing when to fire a customer.

Ayrstone's customers, by and large, are some of the nicest people I have ever dealt with. It is truly a pleasure to work with them, and I truly feel bad when something doesn't go as it should. We all try to go out of our way to make things right

But, that said, there are always a few people who, for a variety of reasons, you really don't want to do business with, and it's a palpable relief to give them their money back and see them walk away. There have been a few of those over the last year, and I was reminded of them today when we got rid of another one.

This afternoon, just before 1, our support folks got a call from someone who wanted to return the product. The support person explained that we will provide an RMA within a day. This customer called them back half an hour later to ask where the RMA was. In the meantime she had sent us an email asking for the RMA, then another 20 minutes later, and a third thirty minutes after that emphasizing that she had been waiting for 3 DAYS for this.

I have a part-time helper goes through the support notes twice a day and sends RMA numbers as needed, and she responded just before 2 p.m., or about an hour after the first call.

I have seldom been happier to get rid of a customer; I'll be relieved when we refund her money.

Another customer, several months back, called and emailed several times a day over several days to ask questions about the product that were clearly covered in the installation instructions or the FAQ on the website. He decided there must be something wrong with the product, so we did an exchange. When the new product worked exactly the same as the "old" product, he asked what could be done. I told him (ever so sadly) that the only option was a refund, and that we were terribly sorry we couldn't help him.

There are customers who aren't worth having - some are too expensive, and some are just too needy or unpleasant to deal with.

Do you have customers you'd like to fire? Have you fired a customer?

It's a little scary, but a liberating experience.

Are you the kind of customer your vendors want to fire? As Dr. Phil likes to say, "How's that workin' out for you?"

Smarphones and business...

2011-03-01T11:21:00.000-08:00

Several years ago I got my first smartphone, a Handspring Treo 650. Already a Palm addict, it was outstanding for me - my Palm Pilot had long ago replaced the calendar (that got left on a train) and contact book that I had carried around for years. I was able to now consolidate from three devicesn (laptop, phone, and PDA) that I had to have with me at all times to two. Once I got a data plan, I was able to get my email on the Treo, so I was actually able to get down to one device a lot of the time.

The Treo had a VGA camera that could shoot video, an easy-to-swap battery, and it could be mated to a Bluetooth keyboard. It also had a good collection of apps available for it, adding terrific enhancements to the included PIM applications (datebk5, goosync), Microsoft Office capability (QuickOffice, Documents To Go), and some nice games. It even had a browser, which, combined with the super-slow dataspeed, was almost worthless.

I went to work for Cisco for a while, which is an "all-Microsoft" shop (at least for the managerial class... it turns out the technical folks have better infrastructure choices), so I was obliged to use the "standard-issue" Windows smartphone, a Samsung Blackjack. The EDGE dataspeed and Internet Explorer were a big improvement on the web experience, but still pretty useless, as was the rest of the phone. I was glad to give that one back to Cisco when I left and actually went back to the Treo.

However, I'm hard on phones, and the Treo had some significant dings that were starting to affect the internal workings of the phone. So, in May, 2009 I got myself an iPhone 3G. This was just after the 3GS was introduced. There wasn't really a lot of info on the 3GS when I made the decision; it had a better camera, which wasn't really a major point for me, and a digital compass. I know which way is which, and I don't take a lot of pictures with my phone, so I got the 3G.

What I didn't know when I got the iPhone was that it didn't:

1.) Shoot video. Better resolution for still shots than the Treo or Blackjack, but no video. Huh??? Of course, the 3GS didn't either until they released an iOS upgrade, which provided video on the 3GS but not the 3G.
2.) Have enough memory. The 3G only has 128 MB of memory, while the 3GS has 256 MB and the 4 has 512 MB. These specs are not widely broadcast by Apple; you have to dig for them, but they have had a HUGE effect on my use of the phone.
3.) Work with a Bluetooth keyboard. This floored me - I never checked; I couldn't conceive that a smartphone wouldn't work with a Bluetooth keyboard. This still strikes me as the most stupid thing Apple has ever done. Worse than Finder 8.x.
4.) Have a good PIM. And they don't allow apps that usefully extend the address book and calendar. I have felt like I had an arm cut off ever since I gave up the Treo... simple, stupid things like being able to have every new calendar entry have a reminder by default just aren't there. I'll set appointments in a hurry and forget to set a reminder. Half an hour after the appointment, I'll look it up and find it there, perfectly happy, never having said a word to me. What's the use?
5.) Be "tetherable." Having a fast internet connection on your phone is fine, but it's even better if you can share it with your laptop when you need to.

Don't get me wrong - the iPhone is an amazing device. Google maps and the "REAL" Safari browser have saved my bacon a few times. Having a GPS is nice, and the multi-touch user interface is terrific. But these things seem like stuff you should have dealt with before putting all the bells and whistles on.

Then there was the problem that the iPhone being inextricably linked (until recently) to AT&T. The radios in the iPhone (all 4? 5? of them - GSM, HSPA, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS - am I missing any?) are very weak to preserve battery power, so I found I dropped a lot more calls on the iPhone than on the old Treo.

My last interaction with AT&T came just a few months ago, however. I had the unlimited data plan (as all iPhone users did), and AT&T brought out limited data plans. Since I had never used more than 130 MB of data in a month (I mostly use it on WiFi because the 3G data rate is so slow), I signed up for the 200 MB per month plan to save $15.

Several weeks later, I got a text from customer service letting me know I was over my allocation. By about 4 GB.

I called them as soon as I could to explain there was a mistake; I had not changed my usage, I had never used more than 130 MB of data in a month, so this was clearly a mistake. They "opened a case" to investigate, and their "investigation" showed that I had used that much data. I asked them to re-open the case, which they did, and then re-closed it. I went in to the local AT&T store to talk to them in person. They were able to bring up the logs and show me the data usage; apparently, one night my phone downloaded over 4 GB of data in about a 6-hour stint. While I was asleep. And I downloaded even more over the next couple of days.

Now, one of the features of the iPhone is that it keeps track of how much data it "sees" passing through the data connection, and that counter (which I have never reset) shows that I have send just under 500 MB and received 2.4 GB in the life of the phone. I also measured the download speed (several times, over a period of several days) from speedtest.net, and found that, at the speeds I get, it would take the better part of a day to download 4 GB of data, assuming the link was running "full speed" the entire time.

I presented all this evidence to the folks at AT&T, who said, in effect, "We don't care." They generously allowed me to retroactively upgrade to a 2 GB data plan, so I had only a $40 overage. I paid the $40 and vowed that would be the last time I did business with AT&T for cellular service. In May my contract is up, and I'll look at what Verizon can offer.

Now, I had mentioned that the memory capacity of the iPhone has become important. I had "jailbroken" my iPhone to try to overcome some of the limitations - it allowed me to shoot video and tether the phone, both of which were very good. I decided at one point to upgrade to iOS 4.1 to get some new features (including support for the Bluetooth Keyboard), figuring I could easily downgrade and re-jailbreak if needed. When I upgraded to iOS 4.1, the phone was usable, but the apps were almost all unusable. It took up so much memory, it took minutes for apps to load. One day I was looking up something on Google Maps, and, after 10 minutes, I finally just gave up - it didn't crash, it just sat there, not responding. This is something I do a lot of the iPhone, so I needed to get it back. I downgraded back to 3.1.3, and the phone is now usable, but still a lot slower than it used to be. It turns out that upgrading to 4.1 installed new data modem software (the "baseband" software) that, apparently, takes up much more memory than the old software. It also makes it impossible to "jailbreak."

Interestingly, several of my applications had updated to iOS 4.1 versions, and they disappeared when I downgraded. The iOS 3.1 versions apparently are no longer available, so I have just lost them.

So, now my iPhone is obsolete. It still works, but it's not nearly as useful as it was. In May I'll evaluate my options on Verizon. They have the iPhone 4, of course, but now that I have been so thoroughly obsoleted in 2 years with an iPhone, I'm very leery of taking that "closed platform" trip again. An open platform like Android has the advantage that a savvy user can maneuver more to reduce the effects of obsolescence; with Apple, you get what you get.

The point of all this, of course, is that I consider a smartphone a necessity of modern business. Although I have considered it, I'm very reluctant to go back to a 3 or 4-gadget existence - I'd like to keep going down the path of having to have my laptop with me less of the time rather than more. I really appreciate being able to pull out the phone and work productively on email and web-based work (as long as it doesn't involve Adobe Flash - another "closed platform" problem).

Whither next on this journey? I'll let you know...

Ah, the joys of business...

2011-01-05T08:44:00.000-08:00

The joys are few, but the responsibilities and hassles are many!

One of the most interesting things has been dealing with suppliers. The AyrMesh Hub is a radio we buy from Ubiquiti, via one or more of their distributors. Ubiquiti is a pretty good company: they design really good stuff that's inexpensive and fairly bulletproof. However, they have a very difficult time managing their own supply chain, and the result has been that they just run out of product every so often.

Their distribution model somewhat exacerbates this: they manufacture in China, and their distributors have to buy in full container (roughly 20'x8'x8') lots. This is a LOT of little radios, and a LOT of capital tied up in them, so they manage their inventory so it's just about empty when the next container load comes in. If Ubiquiti is a couple of weeks late (due to a manufacturing glitch, or a facility problem, or parts unavailable, or any of a zillion other things that go wrong), then these products just disappear out of everyone's inventory as everyone who uses them scrambles to get them.

To this point, we have been lucky - the two times they have run out of product, we have been able to get enough inventory to tide us over, but it has been both expensive and nerve-wracking.

The other major "supplier" hassle has been web hosting... a critical "commodity" for a web-based business.

We have two websites: ayrstone.com, which runs Joomla and is all content-based, and ayrmesh.com, which is the "backbone" of the AyrMesh system and is all code-based. Ayrmesh.com, because of the nature of the information, also is dependent on SSL encryption - all connections must be SSL encrypted.

We started off with GoDaddy, and it worked pretty well. We had a couple of short outages, but, through our early days, it worked just fine. The only problem I had with GoDaddy is their clunky interface for managing all the functions of the website. It is terribly slow, not very convenient, and, every so often, it just wouldn't work (possibly because it is Javascript-heavy and will tax the browser to the max). I also found it worked best with Windows and IE, but I use Linux, iPhone, Firefox, and Safari mostly.

When we launched AyrMesh, I wanted to go with a more solid, commercial hosting provider. A friend recommended Media Temple, so I started with their basic "Grid" web hosting. The tools and interface are WONDERFUL! Their tech support is great, and, for simple web hosting, they have been very good. A few short outages, but, overall, very good. The caveat here is to note I said, "simple web hosting." Ayrstone.com has been on Media Temple's "Grid" service for a year now and has been flawless. Ayrmesh.com, however, experienced an outage for several hours one night. Something in the configuration went wrong in serving SSL pages; eventually, after I called and tweeted the support folks, they got it fixed. I was put on notice.

Some weeks later, it happened again. This time ayrmesh.com was down for about 5 hours, including a time when a reviewer was trying to install an AyrMesh system. Same mysterious problem, and no explanation from the support people that gave me any confidence that it wouldn't happen again. Apparently they just don't monitor the software that provides the SSL support for their web servers very well.

That, of course, was the last straw. The next day I rented a "Virtual Private Server" from GoDaddy (they seem to have the best deals on the web... of course, it's very difficult to compare apples to apples) and moved ayrmesh.com to it. We have had one short glitch for "scheduled maintenance" (they swear they sent me an email notifying me), but otherwise it has run perfectly.

So, for the moment, ayrstone.com is still running on Media Temple and ayrmesh.com is running on the GoDaddy server. There is plenty of room/resource on the server to move ayrstone.com there, but everything is working pretty well right now and I don't mind blowing $16 per month on Media Temple for now.

The next frontier: IP cameras. Here we step into the murky world of importing, and all the fun that comes with it. Stay tuned...

A real company is born...

2010-08-04T20:42:00.000-07:00

Well, in case you haven't seen our ads or mentions on the web, we are truly up and running. In the last few months, we have been working on our website, particularly the Support page where all the instructions and FAQs live. We have added articles on the Community page, and worked to make sure it is more "SEO friendly" so we show up first in searches.

Most exciting, we have sold about 200 AyrMesh Hubs at this point. Some have come back because they didn't do what the purchaser had hoped, and we have even seen our first defects in the last couple of weeks. However, the VAST majority have found "happy homes" out across the U.S. and Canada - it's incredibly gratifying!

Now, while it's true that we have some revenues and expenses (hey, that's the sign of a real company, right?), there are still a few things separating us from being a REAL company:

1. When you call technical support, you talk to me.
2. When you call sales, you talk to me.
3. In fact, any number you call, if I'm not on the phone already, you talk to me.
4. I'm on the phone most of the time.
5. If you send an email to sales, support, info, or just about anything else at ayrstone.com, you're talking to me.

Of course, an awful lot of folks end up talking to my voice on the answering service, so we're going to get some people (who probably know more than I do anyway) to answer the phone.

In the meantime, AyrMesh has started showing up all over the web. Clay Mitchell has been a beta tester, and has mentioned it in his blog. Willie Vogt also wrote a good article about us on his blog, and a very nice article in Farm Progress. Finally, more and more of our customers are sending us great testimonials and reviews on our Amazon store.

It is gratifying to have gotten the company finally off the ground and moving in the right direction. However, now is when the hard work really begins.

Onwards and upwards!

And the product is out... to "friends and family"

2010-04-07T16:06:00.000-07:00

The Ayrstone AyrMesh Hub is in its preliminary sales cycle - "Friends and Family" - especially for the folks who have supported us over the last year and a half.

The website is up as is our Amazon WebStore.

If you didn't get an invitation for our "Friends and Family" offer, leave a comment below and we'll get you one (it's a very limited-time offer, however, so let me know NOW).

For those who are familiar with the high-end wi-fi radios out there, you can see we have standardized on the Ubiquiti PicoStation HP radio (running, of course, our own firmware). It is a terrific little unit - very small, light, easy to mount in many different configurations, and quite sturdy and weather-resistant.

Right now, the focus is on helping farmers (and other folks who live in the country, of course) deploy the AyrMesh network on their homesteads. Next we'll start moving out into the fields... stay tuned!

And time marches on...

2009-10-18T15:30:00.000-07:00

It has been a busy, busy time for the New Ag Business. This summer I drove back to Illinois and Iowa to install beta hardware to "prove out" the AyrMesh(TM) concept. It was an amazing trip, full of discovery and accomplishment, both professionally and personally.

Professionally, it was a huge relief to finally put this system into the hands of some growers so they could see the value it provides and give us feedback on it.

In each location, we installed a gateway node (on top of a house, attached to a router with broadband access) and a field node (solar powered) with a weather station and a field camera. At our Illinois location, the field station is 3/4 of a mile from the gateway; in Iowa, it is 2.4 miles from the gateway.

The systems have performed, albeit not flawlessly. There have been some small glitches, especially in the power systems. In early October, I flew back out there to update the systems and add more solar panels. We're still facing a few problems, but the radio systems have worked flawlessly since I returned.

Personally, it was a great trip - I saw my parents, drove across the Sierras and the Rockies, saw wildlife from Antelope to Pheasants, crossed the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, saw old friends and made new ones.

Now we are just putting our noses to the grindstone to get the first products ready for sale.

Backtracking a bit

2009-06-08T08:56:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me that I have never really explained why we are starting the AyrMesh™ product line or even what it is. Better late than never...

The motivation for the AyrMesh product was born from a number of independent yet related observations:

Growers already have a number of wireless communication systems on the farm: RTK GPS systems, irrigation systems, two-way radios, cellular telephones, and, possibly, several others.
Each of these systems is independent, requiring separate base stations, clients, maintenance, and, possibly, licensing. However, they may still interfere with one another - unifying these into a single network can save money and time.
There are benefits to having these networks connected to the internet: access to RTK networks like the one recently installed by the state of Iowa, and being able to access things like irrigation systems via a web interface, for example.
Growers who have such networks find them indispensable, but they are expensive
For most growers, the only way to find out the condition of a field is to drive out and take a look at it.
For most growers, fieldwork data is kept on the flash cards in the in-cab computers on their equipment and/or on notebooks stored under the seats of the farm vehicles and is not collected and analyzed until after harvest.

Those last two points may be the most important. Point 5 really states that growers are wasting an enormous amount of time driving to fields to look them over, when time is their most precious commodity in the growing season. Point 6 means that all the decisions a grower makes during the season are made without the best possible information.

Setting up some minimal remote sensing equipment (rainfall at the very least; windspeed and direction, temperature, humidity and barometric pressure are easy to include, and, once you have those, soil temperature and moisture sensors are just as easy to plug in) in the fields will at least relieve the grower from having to drive out to the field only to find out it's too wet to work.

While good and even inexpensive weather equipment is available, no good, inexpensive weather stations exist that meet our criteria:

Deliver information via standard Internet Protocol (IP),
Can send weather data directly to a server via the internet and display that data as a web page,
Have the ability to transmit weather data 5 miles or more wirelessly,
Can be run off of a solar panel and a battery (no power outlet or AA batteries required),
Don't require the use of a PC or server on the farm, and
Cost less than a good used car.

We think there is also use for cameras in the field, either natural light, Infra-Red (IR), or near-IR, to help spot crop stress as quickly as possible. Of course, good weatherproof webcams can easily and inexpensively be integrated once you have the IP network available. What other data might be interesting to have collected automatically in the field?

One of the other things we have realized is that, today, all the remote sensing solutions available have the goal of getting data to the home PC. However, a grower belongs in the fields, not in the office staring at a computer. If the grower has wireless internet access in the fields, either via the field network or the cellular network, then a far better solution is to put all the data on a server on the internet where he can access it any time from anywhere - on any internet-connected device, from the computer at home to a laptop to a "nettop" to a smartphone.

This remote sensing capability brings terrific value to the grower, but, as we have learned in the corporate world and, increasingly, even in our own homes, once you have the network, it tends to find a lot more use than you had originally envisioned. We have a lot more in mind for this network... more on that later.

DEC, SGI, and now Sun...

2009-04-09T13:46:00.000-07:00

(reposted from a post to the Sun Microsystems Alumni group)

I am rapidly coming to the belief that companies (and individuals) in the technology business want to be rich, happy, and long-lived, and the best you can do is choose about one and a half of those three.

If you want to be happy and live a long life, I think the company to emulate is Falafel's Drive In. Not what one might consider a tech company, but I don't know of anyone in the valley who hasn't eaten there, because they've been there for at least thirty years. I'm willing to bet there are no billionaires there.

What happened to each of these companies, IMHO, is that they were unhappy until they got rich. When they were rich, they wanted to be happy, and so they were. However, if you get to be rich and happy, your life expectancy goes down dramatically in this business, and so they all died (and I do consider Sun, alas, to be on life support with no real chance of recovery).

To be less abstract about it, each of them set out to build something better than was previously available - an undertaking born of unhappiness. These three companies were each successful and became rich. Once rich, they wanted to do what we are taught in business school: build barriers to competition to product our frachise. So they each used their own chips (made Intel unhappy), their own operating systems (made academics, already accustomed to the openness of BSD UNIX, unhappy), and their own parts, service, and support mechanisms (made small vendors, service providers, and do-it-yourselfers, like Google, unhappy). This meant they were rich and happy, which made unhappy people (in the case of Sun, they were Intel, Linus Torvalds, the PC vendors like Dell, and lots of others like Google) focus their unhappiness on Sun. Sun, being happy, chose to believe that toy computers and home-made operating systems could not possibly be a threat to them, just as
DEC had believed that silly workstations with their cryptic UNIX operating systems could not be a threat to minicomputers and SGI had believed that toy "personal" computers with their pokey data buses and little graphic cards could not be a threat to them.

I think there's an important discipline that good managers (as I at least imagine myself to be) have. It is easy and feels good to look at the product and thinks about how good it is and focus on all of its strengths. A good manager, IMHO, looks at a product and thinks about its shortcomings, what competitors might do to attack it, and how to make the next product make up for those weaknesses. Most importantly, one should look at the product's revenue streams and try to figure out how to cut it in half or less as quickly as possible. Why? because it's what your competitors are doing. It's a miserably unhappy existence, always leading to your company being less rich than you think it should be. But it's the only way to live a long life as a tech company.

Interestingly, the only "tech" company that seems to understand that is IBM. And I'll bet every IBM employee thinks IBM stock should be trading at $200-500 per share instead of the $100+ it's trading at now. Not very rich, not very happy, and living a long life.

As we work to get Ayrstone off the ground, I'm watching my former employers (Sun's only one of them... I have lived a charmed life in this regard) collapse, I cannot help but think about these issues and how to get around them. So this is what I believe today: if you want to live a long life, stay poor and miserable.

Nanostations, OLSR, and OpenWRT

2009-03-20T22:26:00.000-07:00

Well, it has been an interesting period of time since my last post.

Please understand that I have been simultaneously working on the technical aspects of the Ayrstone AyrMesh(TM), updating the web page, writing the business plan, and preparing to show the product at the World Ag Expo in Tulare, CA.

So, first, the technology. While OLSR does definitely work on Ubiquiti's AirOS, the odd fact is that they have somehow messed with MadWiFi so that you cannot create a VAP running in adhoc or ahdemo mode. This, of course, effectively prevents the creation of a mesh network using AirOS.

Ubiquiti must have had some very good reason for doing this, but I have not yet had the temerity to ask them.

I decided at this point to start working with the open-source OpenWRT OS, a Linux distribution originally built for the Linksys WRT54G. It has been ported to the Atheros chipset used by Ubiquiti and runs very well on the NanoStations while providing a lot more control. I started by studing two existing meshing packages: RoBIn and NightWing. From them I was able to figure out how to build a version of OpenWRT that (1) fits in the 4 MB space on the NanoStation and (2) does what we want it to do. So far it's working very, very nicely.

A very nice added bonus is that it works perfectly on the new Ubiquiti Bullet2HP, which is better-suited to our purposes than the NanoStation. I have one of the early units, and it is working very well.

In the meantime, we showed the Ayrstone AyrMesh at the World Ag Expo and were very well-recieved there. People asked what we had and, when we explained, were simultaneously very surprised and very interested. Those who were able to fully understand the capabilities and potential of the concept were eager to try it out, although, in fairness, not everyone really understood it. This is the bane of the high-tech marketer's existance: figuring out how to explain technology so that people understand the full potential of the device - the facsimile machine being a "classic" example.

Meanwhile, we are polishing up the business plan and starting to look for funding. Anyone with a few hundred thousand that you'd like to use to buy into the next high-growth agricultural technology company, please form an orderly line...

OLSR on NanoStation 2

2009-01-05T14:26:00.000-08:00

As noted earlier, I built the Nanostation firmware for the Nanostation 2 using the code and directions found here: https://wiki.graz.funkfeuer.at/UbntStations

You can get the code for the NanoStation 5 there, of course, and I have posted my build of the code for the NanoStation 2 here.

Please let me know if you want to try it out - bmoffitt "at" bmoffitt "dot" com

More from Radio Boy...

2009-01-02T14:45:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine, a few Christmases back, bought me a couple of old serial books, part of the "Radio Boys" series, about a group of boys experimenting with radios (new-fangled, high-tech stuff). They make me smile every time I look over at them - from the 1920s, the language is somewhat odd, but the stories are cute.

I'm trying to find the "perfect" radio system for this product. The perfect radio system will be no-config - just power it up and it will figure out its role. Each node should automatically configure itself as a gateway, repeater, or client (or, even better, repeater-client). I know this is possible, because the Open-Mesh boxes do it. They're just not suitable for outdoor use.

So far, the Ubiquiti radios (I have been testing the NanoStation 2) have won the day - mostly open-source firmware, with a very nice SDK for developing new extensions. The only problem is that the only "meshing" protocol that comes with them is WDS with STP. It actually works pretty well, and will get the job done. However, it requires more setup than I like (not automatic configuration) and doesn't use the "best" encryption algorithm (WEP vs. WPA).

The Open-Mesh boxes run an interesting mix of software, and they can use either B.A.T.M.A.N. or OLSR as the meshing protocol. I recently changed my Open-Mesh boxes from B.A.T.M.A.N. to OLSR and noticed no difference in performance. Running either of these protocols would seem to be a possible solution, but I'd have to change my NanoStations over to OpenWRT, which I am somewhat reluctant to do.

However, I recently found a fellow in Austria who has ported OLSR to Ubiquiti's AirOS as part of a "free wi-fi network" project - see https://wiki.graz.funkfeuer.at/UbntStations.

So I downloaded the SDK, code, patches, and other files from ubnt.com and from funkfeuer.at, and made myself a firmware file for the NanoStation 2 (on about the fifth try - hey, I haven't done real software development for over 15 years!) I loaded it on to one of the Nanos, fired it up, turned it on, and it was running happily.

There are still some small glitches to be worked out before this solution is ready for prime time, so, for now, we'll keep going with WDS. However, the more I read about OLSR the more excited I am about it. The benefits for the Ayrstone customers are great.

Nanostations in the "field"

2008-12-03T12:55:00.000-08:00

As noted in my previous post, I have been doing quite a lot of work with wi-fi radios. I took the Ubiquiti Nanostation 2 radios out for some in-field testing, and discovered some interesting things.

First, I set one up on my roof to try my "integrated solution, Mark I:" Nanostation 2 hooked up to a 7 Amp-hour (A-h) 12 volt battery, with a 5 Watt solar panel and a SunGard charge controller. It worked very well for about two days, and then the battery went dead. I then replaced the 5 watt solar panel with a 10 watt unit, and it went until the first storm before dying. Bottom line: 7 A-h is not enough battery.

In my testing, I have found that the Nanostation 2 pulls about .2 - .25 amps, or about 3 watts. Hence, to run all day requires about 72 watt-hours, or, at 12 volts, almost 6 A-h. If you don't get sunlight for a day, the battery is toast.

My next experiment was to replace the Nanostation with a 63 ohm resistor and try taking out the charge controller and see what effect that would have. The battery has been progressively losing voltage and not coming back up to full charge, and it's at 8 volts today. This indicates that the 10 W solar panel might not be quite powerful enough to keep up with the Nanostation. Interestingly, the resistor is rated for 5 watts, but it's mighty warm.

I found you could get a 50 A-h marine battery at Costco for about $50, and that should provide enough storage to get through a storm, but it won't fit into my scrounged-from-Halted NEMA 4 weatherproof box.

My next adventure involved some radio range testing with the Nanostations. I cajoled a friend of mine to come down to the fields in the Coyote Valley on Santa Teresa Blvd. We didn't have a lot of time, so I put simple "9 dBi" rubber-ducky antennas onto the radios, put one up on the truck, and sent Ethan out for a half-mile walk with a GPS and another radio. I watched the signal strength on my laptop from the truck, and was encouraged by the results.

I also tried replacing the 9 dBi rubber ducky on my end with a 15 dBi, 6+ foot antenna I had purchased. The signal strength diminished noticeably, which was disturbing, but we were out of time so we packed up and went home.

Then, last week, I went afield again to do some testing. I put one Nanostation on a 10' pole on a fencepost, and then drove to another point .85 miles away. What was intriguing about this experiment was the behavior of the "remote" radio. The stationary radio was set on Channel 3, using Wireless Distribution System (WDS), in AP mode, with the MAC address of the remote radio "hard-wired" (entered manually into the WDS table).

The remote radio was started in WDS-AP mode, but, despite having better than -80 dBm signal, would not "link" with the stationary radio. Reset into WDS-Station mode, it linked up perfectly and was able to transfer information back and forth at more than a Megabyte per second.

Why could it not connect in AP mode? Is it more sensitive to distance? (I found the distance parameter on the "stationary" radio was set to half a mile, but I can't imagine that could make too much difference) These are the mysteries in my life.

Incidentally, I tried the 15 dB antenna again and, again, it was outperformed by the rubber duckie. I thought it could have been the frequency (I had tested it on channel 11 the first time), but it was almost as bad on channel 3. I thought it could have been off-vertical (it has a pretty narrow beamwidth), so I moved it around vertical for a while to see if it got better. It didn't.

So I'm decidedly disenchanted by the 15 dBi antenna, and I'm still not sure about hooking up the NanoStations as a pseudo-mesh using WDS, half a mile apart.

Watch this space, as they say.

2008-11-24T09:45:00.000-08:00

Three good months of learning about wi-fi, writing and re-writing business plans, and networking, and I'm approximately where I was when I wrote the last entry.

But I'm learning a lot.

I started out by evaluating Meraki - they have very nice equipment and a system that is really both beautiful and effective. I was able to get a couple of Meraki nodes on Ebay and put them up on my home network. I can't say enough good about them - the system really works well for providing well-isolated internet access across a geographical area. However, my problem is that I want to distribute a LAN, not just internet access, and Meraki's system does not enable access to your LAN. This is a good thing in a "metro" network (you don't want random folks wandering through your LAN) but doesn't fit into my needs.

I then evaluated Open-Mesh, buying two nodes from Open-Mesh.com. I found some basic reliability problems with them, particularly the well-documented problem of the nodes losing connectivity after a brief poser outage. I actually found mine would not connect if the power was off for less than 20 seconds. When I move or reboot a node, I have to remember to unplug it, go do something else, then plug it in again.

I initially decided that they couldn't access my local network because, while they posessed 192.168.1.x addresses (my local NAT) and I could SSH to them at that address, they were providing DHCP addresses in a different net. The Open-Mesh nodes are also very low-power and not suitable for outdoor use. Given those disadvantages, I decided to put them aside.

I took a look at Ubiquiti's radios, particularly the Nanostation 2. It's a terrific radio - sealed, weather-resistant, with an open-source-derived OS called AirOS for which they provide an entire SDK to suppport the creation of third-party software. It also puts out 26 dBm to either an external antenna (now attached with the "standard" SMA-RP connector) or an internal "adaptive polarity" 10 dBi directional patch antenna. One of the standard features is a Wireless Distribution System (or Wireless Domain System, WDS) implementation with an "Auto" feature that can automatically associate with other nearby WDS radios. They also implement Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) to prevent looping in this sort of an ad-hoc network. This provides the same benefits of B.A.T.M.A.N., the protocol used in Open-Mesh, and just distributes the LAN instead of providing "public" hotspots, client isolation, and other features I don't want or need.

It turns out that there are two problems with this approach. First, the "Auto" feature generates a lot of traffic as the number of nodes increased. With three nodes on "Auto" WDS mode, the traffic overwhelmed my little (factory-spec) Linksys WRT54GS. I was afraid of what might happen when I pushed that up to 10 or 20 nodes.

The second problem is that WPA cannot be used in conjunction with WDS. This is a technical limitation of at least their implementation (see here and numerous other places in the Ubiquiti forums) if not WDS and WPA in general.

This brings me to a conundrum: WEP is not very secure (better than nothing, but still...) and the only way to get WDS to work reliably is to set up the partnering manually.

Now, going back to Open-Mesh, it turns out that you can access the LAN, but it does not seem to be reliable in my network. Sometimes it works, sometimes for some nodes, sometimes it doesn't work, for any nodes. However, if I could get the B.A.T.M.A.N. - RoBIn combo working the way I want, I could load OpenWRT onto the NanoStations and try building a NanoStation OpenMesh node. In fact, I might even try just running B.A.T.M.A.N. and see if I could build what I want without the other parts.

That's where the ag mesh network is as we swing into the Thanksgiving holiday.

More to come...

Another fine mesh

2008-08-27T20:45:00.000-07:00

Greetings from my laboratory. My house has become a hotbed of microwave radiation. I now have my old, reliable D-Link router/switch/access point, two Meraki mesh routers (one "mini" and one "outdoor"), and two Open-mesh routers working in and around my very small house. There are also a Linksys WRT54GS and a $40 OpenWRT box (purchased from the internet) kicking around here, as well. Oh, and just to be complete, I got myself a FON router and directional antenna, because it seemed like a handy thing and was very inexpensive.

While the popcorn is not quite popping itself, there is a lot or RF in the air here. Technically, all the Meraki, open-mesh, and FON boxes are roughly the same, running slightly different software. And, based on some informal testing, they all seem to work pretty well. There are some interesting differences: the FON box has two ethernet ports (which may make it impossible to turn it into an open-mesh box should that be my eventual goal). The Meraki mini is identical to the open-mesh routers, but the Meraki outdoor has a more powerful transceiver (200 mW instead of the 60 mW in the "minis").

Results to come...

...and then 11 months pass...

2008-08-13T11:58:00.000-07:00

...and we're back. Briefly, Cisco didn't work out, and I'm glad to be back out on my own again. But my time there was valuable, and I am very grateful to them both for employing me for a few months and for letting me go gracefully.

I don't believe in a deterministic world, but I do believe that fate will sometimes whisper in your ear, and you should pay attention to it.

When I went to Cisco, we had been talking about the concept of farm wireless networks. There is value in having a wireless network on a farm, for data collection (soil sensors, irrigation systems, weather stations, yield monitors, telematics) as well as for internet access (being able to use your laptop from the tractor, for instance). In many ways, Cisco was a very good place for me to be surrounded by networking technology while I was thinking about this concept.

So I'm here, writing a business plan for a new chapter for Ayrstone, based on wireless networking and web technology. There are a lot of nice things out there that the agricultural world isn't using yet, and I want to bring some of the best of "silicon valley" technology to the "great midwest."

In particular, I'm excited about the possibility of using relatively low-cost "repeater" technology from Meraki, particularly their outdoor repeater and perhaps their upcoming solar model. I think that, by mating these to 12 dB gain antennas, we can actually light up a pretty fair area (one per section???). I'm thinking that, by using a network of 5-10 of these, covering a 2000+ acre farm should be possible for a few thousand dollars. My thinking is that, even if the signal goes three hops, you're still in the multi-megabit range with 802.11g, which is just fine.

The devil's in the details, of course, so we need to get out and prove the concept.

My Meraki equipment (and a couple of routers from open-mesh, and erstwhile competitor to Meraki) are on order. Should be fun...

Stay tuned!

A movement to the side, perhaps to move ahead

2007-09-07T10:24:00.000-07:00

As the summer progressed, it became clear that the current operations for Ayrstone weren't going to start making a living for me, and the opportunities we were seeing weren't looking like they'd "blow up" fast enough and large enough to deliver enough money to keep our household afloat.

Furthermore, while I'm still excited about the idea of a farm equipment review site, RateItAll, while intriguing, just doesn't seem to be robust enough to do what I had hoped (I did an experiment to rate precision ag sites). That leaves me with the option of building a ratings engine or using a pre-built one (like RedQueen), which is very time-consuming. Since I didn't have the time to consume, I decided to look for a paying gig.

Happily, about that time I was contacted by a recruiter from Cisco Systems, who was looking for some help in their Networking Academy. The Networking Academy is a fascinating group at Cisco: they create curricula in networking technology to help schools train students to get good jobs in networking, and they give it away, for free, and help the schools adopt it. It's self-serving, of course, but it actually does good for the schools and students - people learn critical skills to get a good job and move up the economic ladder.

This seems like a step sideways, but I don't see it that way. I think one of the most exciting opportunities coming up is networking the farm and getting more farm operations onto the web. This gives me a perfect seat to understand the technology and products available better.

So I'm excited, but I still want to build the review/rating site as I have a chance. Watch for more on that...

Here's a new twist...

2007-05-16T09:48:00.000-07:00

As you can see to the right, I have added a new widget from RateItAll.com, which allows you to rate this blog without even going to RateItAll. This widget is currently in beta, so I encourage all the readers out there to go ahead and cast your arrows at me using this tool, and then let me know what you think of the widget itself via email at bmoffitt (at) ayrstone.com.

Beginning the next fun thing...

2007-05-14T16:48:00.000-07:00

As noted in the last entry, I am looking at starting a rating service for agricultural products. As a beginning, I have started a list on rateitall.com for Precision Ag web sites. See it here: http://www.rateitall.com/t-23470-precision-ag-web-sites.aspx

I think this is kinda cool - even better is to move this all to a promotable site and populate that site with the flash widgets for each piece of equipment so users need never go to rateitall.

Progress and setbacks...

2007-05-02T08:59:00.000-07:00

Ayrstone is up and, well, limping, if not running. The product is available, the store is online, payment processing is going fine, but the product just isn't selling as quickly as we had hoped.

The "big idea" was to try to reach farmers who aren't yet tied into the web to find information, and who may want independent advice and assessment instead of just swallowing what the GPS vendors say. So we decided to focus on direct mail, using lists from the major farm magazines - a sales rate of 1% would have gotten us to cash-neutral, and 2% would make us profitable.

After two mailings, we have a sales rate of significantly less than 1%. The majority of growers are out in the fields now, so there's no real point in trying to sell them now - they're not going to pay attention to anything.

It's disappointing, of course - the product itself is no great shakes in terms of production values, but it's a valuable resource in terms of information, and the "buyers only" website is excellent. Most of all, it's an attempt to start a business based on honesty and openness - the information, our approach, and the product itself is portrayed honestly, the subject we discuss is approached in the most objective way possible, and we are completely independent of the various GPS vendors we discuss. Given how important it is to most growers to get an independent view and not trust what the salespeople tell them, one would think they'd be crowding in to get what we have. But they're not.

In the meantime, I'm using Google AdWords to bring traffic to Ayrstone.com and looking at other revenue sources. I went to a Meetup last night and met the founder of Rateitall.com. I think they have an interesting site that may be useful for some ideas I have. Check out their widget on this blog.

How to screw up a good schedule.

2007-02-21T16:01:00.000-08:00

Honestly, I have discovered many ways to screw up schedules. It's not hard, really - procrastination is both cheap and effective.

But there's nothing more simple or effective than spending a few days with a three-digit fever. It's not just that you lay in bed during those days, unable to move or think, never mind do productive work, but, after the fever breaks, you feel like your brain has been tossed into the blender with the switch set to "Frappe." Smooth-n-tasty...

The Ayrstone project is still coming along, with the first draft of the finished DVD in circulation to some key individuals. Comments back so far are generally positive, with some suggestions of minor changes that shouldn't entail more than 50-80 hours of work.

I went down to Tulare to the World Ag Expo on Tuesday of last week (just before the flu) and handed out flyers for the DVD. I had hoped to hand out 1000 but got 500 into the hands of passers-by in the Pavilion C tent that houses most of the GPS vendors.

We've seen a little pickup in orders, but not what I had hoped (is it ever what we hope?) The next step is to fire up the direct mail machine.

Beginning...

2007-02-10T15:57:00.000-08:00

OK, it's not "Soul of the New Machine," but the new company is up and moving forward. The grand idea: use the combined energy and knowledge of two people, one a Silicon Valley tech veteran and one a midwestern ag expert, and produce something useful to help farmers get a handle on GPS steering products.

The new company is called Ayrstone Productivity, LLC.

I'm one of the principals - I used to be a marketing exec for a small GPS company called Novariant, and worked on their AutoFarm product line. The grand idea we came up with was to capture all the information I had in my head about all the companies in this space and put it into a DVD to give farmers more of a fair shake with the folks selling this stuff.

The result is Ayrstone's first product, shown here. You can preview the first module on YouTube.

We're also hosting a new forum for GPS users in Ag at forum.ayrstone.com.