Backtracking a bit

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Growers who have such networks find them indispensable, but they are expensive
5. For most growers, the only way to find out the condition of a field is to drive out and take a look at it.
6. 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.