Posted on 06/22/2021 10:16:02 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
A western South Dakota farmer wanted a bin aeration control system he could operate from his smartphone. When he learned it would cost $80,000 he used his tech savvy to build his own — for $100.
Too much of a cheap farmer,” chuckles Ehlers, 43, who farms at Presho, S.D. Ehlers said he got tired of forgetting to turn off his aeration.
“In the middle of the night I’d have to jump out of bed and go turn my fans off. Or I’d be gone and it’d start raining and I had to turn my fans off,” he said. “So I always wanted a way to be able to turn off fans from a smartphone.”
He got in touch with a system that is used to control humidity in houses, designed especially for keeping hardwood floors in good shape.
“I found it on the internet, bought a couple of temperature and humidity monitors, and 10 smart switches. I hooked it up to my bins and it worked,” he said. “So I have all 10 bins hooked up for less than $100, rather than $80,000.”
...“The best thing is if you’re laying in bed in the middle of the night, and the fan is still running, you can look on your phone and be able to see the fan is still on and just turn off your controller,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at grandforksherald.com ...
Paywall.
Such brilliance should not unwatched go.....
Agreed. Engineers and accountants—on average cheapies.
Hopefully he’s smart enough to patent. Sounds like he could make some big payola for selling his technology.
Some engineering students and Carnegie Mellon figured out how to do it for about $80K as a class project. PennDOT ended up looking rather stupid when they did.
Thank you.
My brother’s Father-in-Law is a 4th generation farmer. MBA and MS in Agricultural Economics. The tech setup these guys have is amazing. GPS guided tractors, satellite field imagery showing where fertilizer is best used, QR code tagged livestock, the whole shebang.
Here will come some liberal city council person to fine him for whatever like not getting permission or something.
PAYWALL!!!
That was very interesting.
I was reading over at google news, click and there it was...
clicking from FR and yes, PAYWALL.
If nothing else they want my email address to sell...
Probably not SAFETY certified though -— and he will be responsible when the bins go up because a fan and a sensor fail simultaneously, causing a methane buildup, and then the “smart switches” finally get tripped in a methane/oxygen environment, and his family or workers are killed.
I post this as I sit in a PLC/SAFETY/ISO-26262 meeting.
Toyota paid 4 billion dollars for their bitflip error that caused Lexii to accelerate unbound.
Sometimes it is AOK to be cheap, other times, not so much.
reminds me of when my thingamajig that controls the spare tire in the trunk somehow got stuck ...went to the dealership....$200 to fix.....drove to Discount Tire, they fixed it in 5”....for FREE.....
Notice that this guy is an Engineer, go good ones, are all Cheap Charlie #10. Trained to be efficient in the use of time and materials. Waste not, want not.
One of our sons falls into that category, except his family members call him, “Cheap Bastard”!
His wife’s vehicle is a 14 year old GMC suv. His kids have 10 year old vehicles, and he drives a company truck.
He got an early inheritance on my 50 year old aluminum bass boat and still uses the same outboard motor he bought right after he got out of college. He uses this antique to duck hunt and fish for stripers in our local river.
When I go up to the bedroom in the summer, the fan, built into the roof, and working from a temperature regulator, is sometimes still running.
I flip the off/on switch in my walk in closet and then turn it back on in the AM.
I can't "look on my phone" because my bedroom phone, is still plugged into a wall jack, and there is no where to look.
My mobile phone is turned off and is sitting on my desk in my den, where I may or may not turn it back on {for the next coupla days}.
My 'smart phone' is so dumb, that it has never even been connected to google, and has taken just three pictures during its life span.
I still {but rarely} use an old device that used to be called a "camera".
My old 30-30, 30-06, other rifles, shotguns and various pistols are still in perfect working order, and are used more often than all of the phones in my home.
Technology — the new $40 irrigation timers for my garden are all wifi controlled.
Or he could wind up in court for unauthorized modifications to patented software. America no longer rewards ingenuity or innovation 😞
Thank you!
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