This press release from Case/IH says that Case is following Deere’s lead in enabling direct-to-satellite communications on their equipment, but using Intelsat as their satellite provider instead of Deere’s choice of SpaceX.

I’ll make two highly controversial predictions:

• This will be very beneficial to a small number of users, and the companies will claim a great success all around, but won’t be useful to the vast majority of farmers; and
• Agco and Globalstar (the last remaining major incumbent ag equipment supplier and the last incumbent satellite provider) will announce a similar deal soon. (that’s a little snarky, I admit, but… honestly, it would not surprise me.)

I mention this just to re-emphasize the points I made earlier about this and, tangentially, to show how far the incumbent suppliers will go to avoid using open-standards technology that they can’t control. Using a “dedicated” upload link, be it cellular or satellite, allows them to control where the data from your equipment goes and what happens to it. Using an open system like Ayrstone’s AyrMesh WiFi may not give you all the good choices you’d like, but it at least gives you the option to cut off access by using your router to block the data stream. I’d really like to see more open-standard AgTech equipment to give growers and their trusted partners more control over the data from the farm, and I’m hoping that’s a trend that takes hold in the industry.

For many installations, the most difficult (and most expensive) part of building a farm-wide AyrMesh network is getting the Hubs up in the air. To provide maximum maximum range, the Hubs have to have a clear Fresnel zone between them, which means they really need to be at least 25 feet above any obstructions that may lie between them. If your house is on top of a hill in the middle of Nevada, that may be very easy to achieve; if you are in a valley in an orchard surrounded by 50-foot trees, then it’s more difficult.

Most farming country is pretty flat or on rolling hills, so getting the Hubs in the air typically involves some sort of a pole or tower, and that typically involves some construction. There are plenty of ways to get little radios like the AyrMesh Hubs up in the air; if you’re fortunate enough to have buildings in the right places, poles on top of tall buildings frequently work very well. If not, there are myriad possibilities, from utility poles (which can frequently be obtained quite inexpensively) to flagpoles to normal radio towers.

Maintenance

One of the issues you’ll face eventually will be the need to service the Hubs, so you’ll either have to go up to the Hub on top of the pole/tower, or you’ll need a way to bring the Hub down to you. If you have access to a tall scissor lift (that you can get to the Hub’s location) or a bucket truck, that can be very simple.

One quick mention here: good Ethernet cables (link to https://ayrstone.com/www/ethernet-cable/) can reduce the probability and frequency of having to go up the pole or tower. Good strain relief (so the cable can’t pull out of the Hub’s port) and “drip loops” (so water can’t travel down the cable into buildings or enclosures) are also very important to keep you from having to service the Hubs.

Poles vs. Towers

Good, strong towers can be climbed (do you want to?), while poles generally cannot. However, another approach is to use a tower or pole that can “telescope” up and down and even “tilt over” to allow you to access the Hub while you’re on (or much closer to) the ground. One product that was recently brought to our attention for this is from Beacon Pole, which tilts over, making it very easy to service the Hubs. It’s a lot more expensive than a used telephone pole, but, over the life of your farm, it’s likely to more than make up its cost in time saved updating equipment.

Do-it-yourself vs. hire a pro

Installing any tall pole or tower requires some construction expertise and work, and, to extend a network all the way across your farm or ranch, you may need to install several poles and/or towers. Even if you have the requisite skills, it’s a considerable investment of time that might be better used on other aspects of your farm. There are construction companies that specialize in installing poles and towers for cellular telephone companies, utilities, and other customers; utilizing them to put infrastructure on your farm might be a better solution. In particular, we can recommend our friends at Augusta Towers in Grand Rapids, MI – they’ll take on construction jobs from Michigan to northern Indiana and Ohio. If you’re not in their region, check locally for construction companies who can install towers, and work with them.

Invest in your farm

You should view the investment in poles and towers as a long-term investment in your farm; you may install AyrMesh Hubs up there today (and replace them over time with newer, better AyrMesh Hubs over time), but you may also need them for other wireless technologies like LoRa, HaLo, or other future wireless networking technologies that may come to the farm. It’s more likely that there will be more need for wireless networking in the future, not less, so investing in the infrastructure to support it now will pay off. I’ll have more to say on this…

I was interested to read about the new partnership between John Deere and SpaceX to provide Starlink connectivity to John Deere machinery in the U.S. and Brazil.

On one level, it makes good sense – Starlink is already providing high-bandwidth connectivity for farmers across the U.S., so extending that to their farm equipment makes perfect sense.

In point of fact, we have been connecting customers’ machines to Starlink for several years – the AyrMesh system of stationary AyrMesh Hubs and mobile AyrMesh Cab Hubs can connect any Internet access – including Starlink – to your machines, regardless of what brand machines you use.

One of the stated goals of this effort is to better enable autonomy for John Deere’s equipment. This is a good idea for a single machine out in the field, as is currently the usual case in small grains, corn, and soybeans.

However, it’s easy to imagine a future in which multiple machines are working in the same field, in which they have to communicate with each other. If they have to communicate through the satellite, even though SpaceX’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites offer much lower latency than the older geosynchronous satellites, it’s much higher latency than a terrestrial solution. For minimum latency, of course, the key is to keep the data moving on the farm without moving it through the Internet at all, which is only possible using a high-speed, high-bandwidth Local Area Network (LAN). Using a solution like the AyrMesh network is the only way to keep that latency to a minimum.

My other critique of this is that it adds another subscription (for the Starlink terminal), adding to operational cost. I think this is an important advantage we bring to this: AyrMesh is a purchased system, so it helps growers keep operational costs at a minimum.

Criticism aside, I’m very encouraged that Deere is thinking much more seriously about the importance of having their machinery on the Internet, and using Starlink is a bold and intriguing way to accomplish it. As autonomous devices make their way into the mainstream of agriculture, we’ll be there to help make it practical and affordable.

Years ago when we were starting Ayrstone, we introduced the idea of “Beyond the last mile.” There was (and continues to be) a lot of talk about the “last mile problem,” because it’s very expensive to run cable, wire, or fiber from a major line to each house in rural areas. Wireless ISPs, cellular carriers, and satellite Internet providers have filled in quite a bit to solve the “last mile,” with results of varying quality. But getting broadband Internet to the home or business office – solving the “last mile” problem – doesn’t fulfill the needs of most farmers, ranchers, and others working in rural environments – they need broadband access beyond that “last mile.” Back in the early days of Ayrstone, one of our beta customers remarked: “We should have gotten together and bought the local spectrum and started our own cellular service.”

It’s an interesting idea, but probably would never have worked then – the carriers would probably have bid up the price of the local spectrum just to prevent anyone else from having it – in the early days of cellular broadband, no one knew exactly how valuable spectrum was going to be, and carriers paid some outrageous amounts for spectrum they never used.

Now the cellular market is much more mature and the carriers are much more careful about where they spend their money; in addition, the FCC set aside some spectrum in the 3.5 GHz. band called “CBRS” – Citizens Broadband Radio Service – also known as “LTE Band 48” – as “unlicensed” (although still regulated) spectrum that can be used to create private or public LTE and 5G networks.

This means that my friend’s idea of setting up a private cellular network is actually feasible – companies are doing it now to create private, hybrid, and public cellular networks for a variety of reasons. In particular, companies are building out private cellular networks to provide cellular service outside the enterprise network but still in a company-controlled network environment. It ends up being similar to a WiFi network – companies control the network and access to it – but using cellular technology.

There is another big upside to private cellular: because cellular equipment can use higher power and larger antennas, the cells can offer wider coverage and can be placed further apart than even high-power, high-gain WiFi access points like AyrMesh Hubs.

However, there are some rather extensive downsides for rural use:

• Cellular equipment is much more expensive than WiFi equipment, as well as more complex and difficult to install and maintain. It requires significantly more planning and skill to set up and maintain a cellular network.
• CBRS is in the 3500 MHz. band, while WiFi is in the 2400 MHz. band – higher frequencies are more prone to fading at distance and more susceptible to obstructions to the Fresnel zone.
• While CBRS is unlicensed, it is still regulated. There are still licensed users (Priority Access Licenses, or PAL) in the spectrum, and you may be forced to move frequencies away from them if you use the free General Availability Access (GAA) license. If you are trying to set up a network across a large area, it may be desirable to get a license to keep others off the frequency.
• You’ll need to deal with getting SIM cards for all the devices you want to allow on the private network, and manage the provisioning and access controls for those devices.

The “beyond the last mile” problem is a very real one for farming and ranching, as well as other rural enterprises. Private cellular is one of the solutions available IF you have access to the money and skills necessary to build and maintain a cellular network. WiFi, like Ayrstone’s AyrMesh, remains a more practical solution for most rural residents and businesses.

Every day here at Ayrstone we get calls from people whose AyrMesh Hubs, Bridges, or Receivers don’t work. And, in fairness, once in a while we have a dud – a device that escapes into the wild not working as it should. However, that’s not very common.

It’s far more frequent that the problem lies in the customer’s network – the network on one side or the other of the Hub, Bridge, or Receiver. And we want to help – we love to help – however, unfortunately, we are here and your network is there – we are very limited in the ways we can help.

The good news is that, in my opinion, networking is very much like plumbing. There are times to call a pro, but the vast majority of jobs can be easily and quickly done, and you don’t even have to invest in specialized wrenches. Knowing some basic network troubleshooting is useful whether you’re using AyrMesh or not – bad things occasionally happen, even to good networks.

There are three types of problems we most commonly run into on customer’s networks – I’ll explain them and how to fix them.

The first problem arises when a Hub, Receiver, or Bridge radio just fails to light up. An advanced case is where the radio lights up but, in the case of a Gateway, does not show up in the router’s DHCP table or, in the case of a Remote, the device shows up in AyrMesh.com and on the router’s DHCP table, but the devices connected to it cannot communicate with the Internet. The first suspect in these cases is a bad Ethernet cable.

If you look closely at the RJ-45 plug on the end of an Ethernet cable, you can see that the cable consists of 8 small wires. 4 of these wires carry the power to the device, if appropriate, and 4 of these wires are used for communications. If one of the wires is broken, either the device will not get enough power, or it will get power but won’t be able to communicate with what’s at the other end of the cable.

Happily, Ethernet cable testers are readily available online and at most home supply stores (Home Depot, Lowe’s, Menard’s, etc.). They are very easy to use: they have two pieces; each piece plugs into one end of the Ethernet cable and then it just sends electricity down each wire and shows whether or not it sees the electricity at each end. If one of the lights doesn’t light up, you know that the cable is bad.

One hint: the “badness” is most frequently at the RJ-45 plug – you can recover most cables from replacing the RJ-45 connectors. You need to have RJ-45 connectors and a crimping tool; inexpensive crimping tools require a LOT of strength to get a good crimp, and more expensive tools have ratcheting action to increase the mechanical advantage. One other hint: some rodents seem to like the taste of Ethernet cables.

The second case is when you are working on some device on the network and the network just suddenly stops – you can’t get to the Internet or any of your local devices. I’ll volunteer that this happens to me a lot, especially with some WiFi cameras, printers, and even some older laptops. I’ll have the device connected with an Ethernet cable, and I’ll go to configure the WiFi. I’ll put in the SSID and the encryption passkey and… everything stops. And it typically takes me a minute to think about it – I have the Ethernet connected to the network, and I just connected to the network with the WiFi… I have created a Network loop!

What happens is that the traffic between the device and your router suddenly starts going down both interfaces (Ethernet and WiFi), and the router starts acknowledging and answering that traffic down both interfaces. The device suddenly is getting twice as much information from the router, so it acknowledges that information, generating a multiple of the original data, and it goes on until the network reaches capacity and your router just stops. This is called a “broadcast storm” – because the traffic expands exponentially, it brings things to a halt remarkably quickly.

The solution, of course, it very simple: disconnect one interface, and the network will start working again. But, if you’re like me, it can take a few minutes to remember exactly what you did before everything stopped working.

Two notes: many newer devices automatically cut off traffic to the WiFi port if they detect that there is traffic on the Ethernet port, thereby preventing you from creating the network loop. However, network loops can be pretty subtle; for instance, having two Hubs or an AyrMesh Hub and an older AyrMesh Receiver (newer Receivers turn off the WiFi port if they’re connected to the router via Ethernet) connected to your router via Ethernet at once (for instance, initializing a device without unplugging your Gateway Hub) can cause a loop as they connect via their wireless, and other devices can surprise you as well. The strangest one we have seen was a user who had a low-power “Zigbee” type device to link to sensors in the field. He had a second device connected to an AyrMesh Receiver in another field to “talk” to the sensors in that field. However, the sensors were a meshing type, and could “talk” to each other, and sensors in the two fields would occasionally make contact with each other, causing a network loop. That took some time to figure out…

The last common problem we see is IP address conflicts – two or more devices on your local network with the same IP address.

Each device on your network must have a unique address. If your router detects two different devices with the same IP address, it will just shut down, or at least shut down one port. The good news here is that the AyrMesh equipment can’t CAUSE an IP address conflict; the bad news is that they also cannot PREVENT an IP address conflict.

There are a number of ways in which an IP address conflict can occur, but, by far, the two most common ways are:

1. Someone setting up equipment on the network provides a “hard-coded” or “static” IP address to a device (instead of that device using DHCP to automatically receive an address from the router), and they use an address that is (1) already in use, (2) in the range of addresses the router can use to assign to devices automatically via DHCP, known as the “DHCP range,” or (3) they use an address that is outside the router’s DHCP range and then, at some point, the router is reconfigured and the address is within the DHCP range. If the same address is given to two devices, then the network (or at least part of the network) halts immediately. If a static address is assigned within the DHCP range of the router, then, eventually, the router will assign that address to some other device, at which time there will be a conflict and at least port of the network will halt immediately.
2. Someone sets up a second router on the network that is configured to use the same IP subnet as the primary router. The router’s address (typically 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1) may conflict directly with the primary router’s address, which will bring the network down quickly, or the router will eventually assign an IP address via DHCP that is identical to another device with an address assigned via DHCP by the primary router, and the network will come to a halt.

To the first point, we STRONGLY recommend against using static addresses on any equipment, because almost all modern routers enable “DHCP reservations” or “dynamic static addresses” or something like that, by which the router is configured to provide the same IP address to a particular device every time. This means that the router is aware of all the devices on the network and won’t accidentally give two of them the same IP address, but critical devices (e.g. IP cameras, grain dryers, etc.) always have the same IP address on your network, so you can do things like “port-forward” to them and know they’ll always respond.

To the second point, setting up a second router is not very difficult, AS LONG AS you understand the basics of IP addressing and IP subnets. For instance, if your main router has the LAN address 192.168.0.1, it is creating a network with the subnet 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.254 – the first three numbers are always the same, indicating they are all on the same network, and the third number is unique to each device. So the easy way to use a second router is to set it up with the address 192.168.2.1 (outside the IP subnet of the first network because the third number is different), so it will create a different subnetwork with addresses 192.168.2.1 to 192.168.2.254 – no conflicts!

You can also segment your IP subnet between the two routers by setting the first router to serve, for instance 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.128 and the second router serve 192.168.1.129 to 192.168.1.254, but that’s a bit beyond the scope of this article.

You can learn more about routers and networks in our simple three-part series on routers and switches.

This knowledge can help you debug the vast majority of problems you find on your network. We can offer a few simple rules based on this:

• Make sure your cables are good. An old joke goes, “The hardest part of wireless networking is the wires!” It’s funny because it’s true… and you can now buy short, good Ethernet cables at home supply stores for testing. If you replace a cable with a short, known-good cable and the device works, you know the cable you replaced is bad, even without a cable tester.
• When connecting devices, or changing from connecting via Ethernet to connecting via WiFi (like a WiFi camera), keep your wits about you. If the network stops, disconnect one interface.
• Avoid using static IP addresses – use DHCP reservations for devices that need unchanging IP addresses.
• Don’t use additional routers on your network. If you need WiFi in a remote location, use a WiFi access point (ASUS routers and some others can be configured in “AP mode” or “Bridge mode” to turn the routing part off). If you need additional Ethernet ports, use an Ethernet switch.

An AyrMesh user recently made me aware of a relatively new product that’s now available: StepsGMS. StepsGMS is a WiFi-capable Grain Bin Management System that works with the AyrMesh WiFi system. In talking to the folks at StepsGMS, I realized that we had a lot in common. In particular, we both want to bring high-quality products to the ag market at the lowest possible prices. We are both focused on helping farmers improve productivity, and we both want to help growers maintain control of their farm data.

Eli Troyer, owner of StepsGMS, is a veteran in grain bin management. He realized that current technology allowed him to develop a much lower-cost grain bin management system using WiFi. He didn’t even know about Ayrstone at the time, but realized it would not be that difficult to get WiFi out to most farmers’ grain bins. His initial thought was that you could even use a cellular “hotspot” device if there was cell coverage nearby.

However, if you have an AyrMesh network, you can use the StepsGMS products with your existing Internet connection and avoid any additional cellular subscriptions.

Although they are primarily focused on grain bin management, their products have uses well outside just that. Their WiFi Temperature Sensor can be used to measure temperatures anywhere on the farm or ranch: bins, tanks, piles (hay, silage, manure, compost etc.), even soil temperature. The Smart Switch (comes in Indoor or Outdoor packages) can be used to turn on and off anything on the farm – ventilation fans, lights, heaters, pumps, etc.

These products are controlled by their app (available for IOS or Android devices) – you can see demos of the app and what it can do on their Facebook page.

If you have grain bins you want to monitor and control, please give the folks at STEPS GMS a call today, and please tell them that you learned about them here!