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OH | This is my first post, but I have been a long-time reader. Usually, when someone on our farm has a question my brother posts, but this one is a little different so I made an account. I know there is always skepticism from a new poster, but I don't have anything to sell. I'm just interested in your thoughts on grain bin monitoring and a DIY system I made.
A bit of background about me - I do some grain farming part time while also having a career in engineering. My engineering work happens to cover environment monitoring, data science, and some software stuff. I live about 75 miles from our farm, and my dad is getting older so we upgraded our grain system with three 48'-10 ring grain bins to make harvest easier on him when labor is short. In total, we have about 250,000 bushels of grain storage in about 10 bins. I have been concerned about grain monitoring because of my proximity to the farm, but I couldn't find the right solution. I was originally quoted $30,000 per bin for a monitoring system, which seemed absurd. I see that Amber Ag has a cheaper solution, but I was already exploring a DIY system when I found their stuff.
Instead of buying something, I made a DIY system that is built around an arduino, commercially available LoRa/cellular boards, and commercially available sensors. It includes a certain RTD sensor for temperature monitoring that can be daisy-chained together to potentially space dozens of sensors along a cable up to 300 feet in length (for sensing on a cable through the grain). It also has a sensing system for the headspace above the grain, where it senses volatile organic compounds (alcohol and rotting grain), temperature, humidity, and CO2. It uses the same kind of CO2 sensor that Amber Ag uses. The LoRa/Cellular board communicate the sensor data to an online console where the webhooks send the output to a Google product that acts as a data storage system, charting system, and can be used for email alerts if thresholds are crossed. Basically, I can log into my Google account from anywhere in the world and see a the current values and some charts, plus I get alerts over certain thresholds. The whole thing is powered by a small solar panel.
I think it's a pretty decent starting point for a solution for grain bin monitoring, and because it's all commercially available stuff it's quite inexpensive compared to other options. I'm going to build a few for my big bins that include the cable sensors. I think the smaller bins will just get the sensors in the headspace or maybe just one cable. We are paying a lot in electricity, so having temperatures through the grain for cooling would save us money from running too long when we freeze it.
I'm not sure what to do with it after making a set for my own use. I'm not real interested in quitting my day job, but there could be value in it. I would consider trying to commercialize it, but really it wasn't all that complicated that another established company wouldn't be able to scale ahead of me faster that I could do. I thought about pitching to a grain bin manufacturer and just taking some sort of cut, but again, it wasn't that complicated and nearly all the manufacturers have their own system.
I've also thought of using it to monitor things like electric fences, center pivots, wells, cattle water levels, hog barn environments, etc. since it is quite cheap. There's a lot of little stuff that farmers drive around checking, and while farmers enjoy doing some of it, it's also a burden.
Let me know if you think it's something other farmers need, and also let me know what you would do with it if you created it. I can also cross-post in CropTalk, but I don't want to spam the site as a new user if people will get grouchy. I'm open to your ideas and setting up conversations with people in the grain bin industry. My email is in my profile.
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Made a DIY Internet Connected Grain Bin Monitoring System
