Everything's included except the water in the in the cordless drill they give
that to you too if you buy enough of them I promise we do have some software
in the background that helps with placement Jonathan's been talking about
a lot about making sure that we have the sensors in the right location we do
offer that as far as our package goes that's free for you to go to the crop X
website, take a look at that and we'll walk you right out to the field with
your cell phone where we think we should place it we put like to put them between
the plants post emergence you simply just take your drill out there go ahead
and drill yourself a little final hole
and we like to put a little bit of water in that pilot hole as well to make sure
that we have really good contact with the soil and you can let that sit for a
little bit
one thing while Ben's getting ready here that's unique about our sensors is their
non slurry so you don't have to order a hold and take part of the dirt that you
took out mix it with water gives you a mud base milkshake base and pour back in
there's none of that. So our design is a simple drill bit in the ground you
drill it out in the way our sensors design with the 3d technology it slices
into the side of the hole where there's no slurry and it makes installation a
lot easier and so we actually we have a sensor on top of the auger on the bottom
of the auger and on the side we measure both capacitance which is the volumetric
water reading and we also do temperature at both our 8 and 18 depth so once you
let the water settle a little bit you can go ahead and just screw that into
the soil again pretty self-explanatory
and then you can just take your just a little key that sits on top of here to
finish screwing it in basically you'll just screw it down until it's flush with
the soil that will give you your proper depth once you get that screwed in
you're basically done with the physical installation of it there's a QR code
scanner right here that helps geo-reference the sensor just from your
application from your smartphone and the CropX app scan that in it will
activate itself turn itself on and you'll be up and going from there within
30 minutes you'll be receive data from your sensor and you can grab the
information from a website, tablet, smartphone or computer Ryan's going to
go through a little bit what what you might be able to expect from that.
The geo-reference is huge especially you know it gets harvest time and you've got
a corner Milo a field full of Milo or corn and you don't have to go out there
on your hands and knees and look for it you just pull it up on your phone and
say you are 1125 feet you start walking you know you were 500 feet he'll tell
you where to go how close you are to it so you can go pick it up out of the field.
Like I said before we're all about simplicity our software is ours we
have our own software platform we don't third-party it we make the sensors we
make the software our headquarters is in Tel Aviv, Israel that's where the guys
that do all the software stuff are but our US sales team is based out of Denver
Colorado we're spread out across the nation.
There's two things I feel like make our sensors different you know and if you're
using another sensor there's some great products out there I will not discount
anybody else I applaud anybody that's interested in using moisture sensors and
conserving water but the ease of installation you know you saw it was
less than four minutes Ben went from start to finish and installed it and
then the price point on our sensors has been said we read volumetric water
content and temperature so you say okay I buy the sensor how does it help me as
a grower it kind of there's two different feel
thought where I'm at in my main region is right outside Lubbock Texas we're
deficit waters we we don't have big wells like they do in Ben's part of the
world in Nebraska. You know I've got some guys on average they got four wells tied
together I get 480 gallons so it's very important then that they use that water
wisely so let's one farmer for example friend my name's Josh he had a sensor
he bought several he puts one in before before planting time this year it's been
exceptionally drive for us we've not gotten much moisture this winter with
our limits of water we want to make sure that our soil profile is full before we
plant so we'll turn our pivots on to fill our profile up because we don't
want to plant and be behind if we're behind that far we can't catch up so he
may have ten sensors for 10 different circles they'll put one on the ground
just to see where we're at the profile is it full or is it not he'll also leave it
in because the temperature is very important a lot of these new seeds
coming out are very specific about when they want you to plant with soil temps and
it'll tell you exactly what the soil temp is and you can put the seed in the
ground at the right time for proper germination so it helps a bunch so he'll
put that sensor in look at this profile then he'll pull that sensor out of the
ground when it's time to plant he'll plant his crop the crop comes up you
make sure you got a good stand you put this right in the row okay you leave
your strip till once you get a good stand up you put it right in the row
with your plant scan it in every 30 minutes start sending your information
it doesn't ding your phone every 30 minutes the only time it goes off is
when you log in to look at it you can set up some alerts where if you have a
field that drops below a threshold that you design it will send you a text if
you choose to do that so hey you know mr. Freeman you know your Johnson farm
needs attention or what have you so you get the probe in the ground it's working
the way my guys down there have really bought into this because we don't have a
lot of over watering problems in our areas but where it's really benefitted
them is on conserving water they're not going to turn that pivot on unless they
absolutely have to with the cost of our sensors if you can save one rotation you
know if you're running five or six Wells one rotation you're going to nearly pay
for your sensor you save to I guarantee you're going to pay for it and if let's
say we get a big rain and we get a two-inch rain event the wind blows like
crazy for two weeks you start getting nervous because you got so much money in
that field you think well when I need to turn back
on my neighbor turned on when do I turn on you can watch that sensor and know
the confidence before your plant ever gets to a wilting point when to turn
that on for everyday you can keep that turned off you're putting money in your
pocket likewise it lets you know hey we've had a lot of high winds it's been
pretty hot we need to turn that pivot on so it's just a management tool it's not
to save all but it helps you manage your water effectively and stay in tune with
your crop it just tag on something this is a cellular device we transmitted via
AT&T and Verizon actually I put one of the both in the ground they they both
have good coverage in here we send SMS ah it's a little lower frequency than a
voice or a data package often that makes it fairly easy for us to get through the
canopy it is important that you can send a text message from your field because
that is how we communicate with the class so keep that in mind and an SMS
text is much easier to send that have been a regular text year if anything we
found that we have a lot better coverage than what what some of the carrier's
even advertised so if you've been around you'll notice some differences our
sensor doesn't have a stand there's no T post there's no pole there's no solar
panel there's no cords everything is housed right here inside that little
mushroom head each has got like been set a sill chip in it that's how we transmit
our data to the cloud each one's got five double-a lithium batteries in it
the battery life is guaranteed for two years we believe it will last up to four
years the sensors that we put in we have 200 and some sensors that went in in
2015 in Kansas not any of them had to have a battery placed yet the lights not
even on it's got a little battery gauge up there but the light hadn't come on
when they go out you call Ben, me, your rep, your affiliate and it's 25 bucks for
the new battery pack and we'll ship it to you that day and it comes to you and
we do also have money back guarantee 30 days to make sure that you get you get
cellular coverage in the area for some reason you don't get coverage
we'll make sure that you're taken care of. The actual life of the
sensor is estimated we haven't had at this one but we estimate basis based on
product design and the things that go into the sensor its actual components we
estimate 20 years to be the life on the sensor you know granted you ought to put
batteries in throughout that time but that's that's the simplicity of it you
can check it from anywhere I've got guys that you know a bunch of guys from Texas
a bit Houston stock show this last week and they got wheat going they're able to
pull up their app on their phone and they call back home and talk to their
hands or their family and say hey I need you to run turn the pivot on over here
since you're showing it's dry so they can wander to that from wherever they're
at from the kids baseball games from what have you. Well like I said we do have
our own software it's hard to see on the TV from out here but when we're done
talking if you want to come in the tent, we got three slides our sensor does show
a projection so when you pull up this your graph it'll show you right now
where you're at on each sensor like if you had three sensors in the field which
most the time we put one in the field but it'll pull up your sensors and show
you the graph right now it will also give you a three-day projection and it
when it changes from now the projection your graph lines go from straight line to
dotted the dotted projections so each sensor you put in the ground is going to
going to sync with the three local weather stations the closest weather
stations to it that are publicly provided and free it will average the
data from those three weather stations come up with the projected forecast for
participation for wind for ET and it will give you a projected graph on your
on your software so it will say okay Ben if you don't change here's where you are
today with the projected weather for three days if you don't change anything
this is where you're going to be and if you got a sensor it's going to show in
the red it'll show in the red so you can make your irrigation choice accordingly
so if I know okay three days from now is gonna be in the red but the weatherman
is telling me we're going to have a 70% chance of rain this weekend I'm not
going to turn that I'm not going to turn that pivot on I want to wait and see if
we get a rain and see if it comes back up how are our feeling refill points it
that's the question everyone asks our full point is is saturation all right
that that means that soil cannot hold any more water if it did to be on top of
the ground to be running off down your turn row our refill point is set at 50
percent my guys that I work most closely with in Texas can't handle the 50
percent refill point if they get down to 50 percent plant available water they
can't catch back up so the farmer can move that line up and down accordingly
if you got a well that pumps 1300 gallons you can handle that 50% refill
if you got a well that's pumping 500 gallons you may want to up your refill
point and say okay i want to i want my grass to turn red when i'm at 70 percent
plant available water at simple click of a mouse or your finger you slide that
graph up or down to whatever you want to manage it um someone said okay right
what happens if I run over this with my tractor okay that's a great question if
you run out your tractor it's not a problem
then we'll sell you another one I'll show you another one just as quick as we
can do it I've actually had a guy run over it with a John Deere 80 120 this
were the time it didn't hurt it the saying I applied over one with the
offset and he got to buy another one so you know it's like anything else the
cool part is there's no stands no wires you got to worry about hitting the spray
boom going across the field you don't have to worry about a rabbit or a field
rat chewing through your wires you put it in the ground and it's pretty much
bulletproof down there so if you have any questions we can also pull some of
the some of the data that we've had out here last week but we'd be happy to go
through that but I think that we just really thank you for being here and
being attentive so you bet y'all have a great day fellas