Gatekeeper alternatives ?

[Phil P]

Be interesting to see the accuracy at harvest. How do the figures change across the season?

Also be interesting to see if they can use the data from that to target yield improvements....so you can keep track of the effect of different applications and changed made to fields throughout the year. i.e. added 50kg extra N to one field....does yield prediction increase as a result.

It’s surprising how much the yield prediction can alter, for example last year during the drought as the dry spell went on the predicted yield slowly dropped. I’ll be honest those I’ve not yet worked out how close it was as grain isn’t weighed into store only out (hopefully have the weigh bridge project done this year) but it’s looking like the prediction was pretty close up to now. As for some N field trials that’s definitely something we will be looking into in the near future. I’m currently on the steering group for our local AHDB monitor farm so may also do some trails there also.

This will be our first proper year with everything been vr applied- seed N/P/K etc. We can build up our yield maps and start seeing what’s working and what’s not, up to now though I’m pretty pleased with how things are looking.
The vr seed has made a massive difference to crop establishments in some of our fields with viarable soil types with even plant numbers across the whole field.

 

[Clive]

Be interesting to see the accuracy at harvest. How do the figures change across the season?

Also be interesting to see if they can use the data from that to target yield improvements....so you can keep track of the effect of different applications and changed made to fields throughout the year. i.e. added 50kg extra N to one field....does yield prediction increase as a result.

it ranked field almost perfectly here an was very accurate on OSR yields (literally within a few tonnes)

It was out on wheat qty but I think the very dry grain fill caught the model out a bit there


the more data it gets the more accurate it will become, these system self learn but need multi season data to do so

 

[farmerfred86]

Do you use the soil mapping facility Clive? Wondering how it compares from satellite to ground soil scanning/zoning?
Like the look of it. With some tweaking and addition of margins etc it could compete with gatekeeper...

 

[Alistair Nelson]

looking at Rhiza digital (used to be Rhiza precision) any comments or anyone using it?

Do you have any contact details for these people so I can contact them or a website, does it do costings as well as precision farming maps, can you import and export AB lines etc?

Cheers

Alistair

 

[Clive]

Do you have any contact details for these people so I can contact them or a website, does it do costings as well as precision farming maps, can you import and export AB lines etc?

Cheers

Alistair

No costing, just VRA stuff seed on zone sampling / NDVI and SAR

Speak to Max Daffron

 

[Clive]

Do you use the soil mapping facility Clive? Wondering how it compares from satellite to ground soil scanning/zoning?
Like the look of it. With some tweaking and addition of margins etc it could compete with gatekeeper...

Yes use full soil mapping including OM and C:N ratio etc service designed for notill

It’s become a tool I use most days

Can’t see me ever putting financial / margin details into though now Origin own it (Agrii) - that’s not data I would ever give a distributor

 

[farmerfred86]

Thanks Clive sounds useful. I was hoping to use it without gatekeeper but it sounds like a different beast entirely. Will take a look.

 

[Northdowns Martin]

Yes use full soil mapping including OM and C:N ratio etc service designed for notill

It’s become a tool I use most days

Can’t see me ever putting financial / margin details into though now Origin own it (Agrii) - that’s not data I would ever give a distributor

Soyl and Frontier connection comes to mind.

 

[farenheit]

I've come to the conclusion that any company that claims to have some crop recording software on the horizon is talking balls. Everyone talks about something new coming and nothing ever does. Surely there's huge demand for something better (and no, I'm not going to!)

 

[sy247]

We are in the process of developing a platform but it is not a trivial task. We are developing an Open Source platform which we are doing alongside our day jobs, so it is going to take longer than a commercial company. The benefit in the long term is that we hope to build a platform that is much more flexible than a commercial offering because it can be contributed by a developer community. I would be pleased to discuss our project with you in more detail if you would like to PM me your number.

 

[ollie989898]

We are in the process of developing a platform but it is not a trivial task. We are developing an Open Source platform which we are doing alongside our day jobs, so it is going to take longer than a commercial company. The benefit in the long term is that we hope to build a platform that is much more flexible than a commercial offering because it can be contributed by a developer community. I would be pleased to discuss our project with you in more detail if you would like to PM me your number.

What is your sales and product model?

Both existing products are cloud based and involve the input and uploading of what constitutes very valuable commercial information to servers belonging to the company in question. They are thus collecting the information from thousands of users and speaking as a customer using that product, I personally would not be comfortable with that.

You will need a product that can be installed to multiple devices, with the ability to sync between them. For example, a farmer buys a software packager from yourselves and installs the master version on his office PC. He then installs a client or app on three ipads, which are used by him and his team. These ipads are updated on the go, in the field and sync with the master on the office PC when they meet office wifi or over the mobile network. No commercially sensitive data, names, field sizes or application records ever leave this network to be collated by third parties.

One hurdle you may meet is the need for a dedicated third party piece of software (a database) that keeps the user up to date with product legislation and so helping the user ensure the decisions he is making are legal.

 

[sy247]

Hi Ollie, some great points you have raised there. You can find a lot of information about what we are doing in this thread:

https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/openfarm.282058/#post-6237814

To respond to a few of your questions specifically.

The software will be released under the GNU Public License. It will be available for download and free to use. It is written for the Drupal web framework so if you are technically minded you can install a MySQL database, install Drupal and OpenFarm on your PC and use it.

In terms of our sales model, we will charge for services related to the platform. For instance if you wanted to run it on premise on your own PC (or server) we would set it up and configure it for you. We would provide support.

We are aware of the commercially sensitive nature of the data being stored and will provide the ability to encrypt the data in transit and at rest. Therefore the data stored in the database would only be accessible by the holder of the private key, i.e. you. We will provide a hosted cloud service but wouldn't be able to access your data, unless you gave us the key.

Initially it will be a web based product but we plan on releasing a mobile app for Android / iOS which will synchronise with the database.

Thanks for the suggestion about keeping up to date on changes to legislation. That is something we will look into.

 

[ollie989898]

My pleasure.

I don't actually know if a farmer user would necessarily need your product to contain or link with or otherwise rely on a third party legislative database, as a third party agronomist/advisor I needed it because it formed part of the 'safety net' and I presume was one of the conditions required by professional indemnity insurers- you were less likely to torch someone's crop by accident if everything you did was screened against the database containing all the tiny legislative bits not everyone can always remember. A farmer, who owns the crop himself, might not actually need this but my understanding is limited in this area.

 

[farenheit]

Any news?

 

[l'ordinary bonville]

Aren't there already plenty of excellent systems in Europe or US that will do everything from yield mapping to full records and costings?

 

[Clive]

Aren't there already plenty of excellent systems in Europe or US that will do everything from yield mapping to full records and costings?

Yes but all I’ve looked at need work (investment) to make them Uk compatible

 

[l'ordinary bonville]

Yes but all I’ve looked at need work (investment) to make them Uk compatible

Is it Fieldview in US? What about the systems linked directly to tractor software like variodoc or class agrocom?

It sounds great in theory to plan tasks in advance, send to staff phones/ipads, pick up in tractor control box, record what "actually" happened and all back to main software server to record physicals and financials, keep stocks of inputs and grain stores, bill customers, cost machines operations, assurance and legal records.

Do these things happen anywhere else or is it just wishful thinking?

 

[farenheit]

Any developments in the farm record keeping world at the moment? Gatekeeper getting any further with their Cloud project?

 

[Alistair Nelson]

Had a good meeting with Richard Larke from Vantage this morning to discuss farmworks and it looks like they now have better control of it in the UK and have Ian Beecher Jones in the background if you feel you need telephone support . I'm sticking with the stand alone version for now but there is a web based version also available but to get the precision farming you need to sign up for a block of satellite imagery which then gets pricey. But thankfully things starting to fall back into place

 

[croppers]

@Alistair Nelson have you any more information on the web based solution? Is it being offered by Trimble currently?
Thanks