Ayrstone Productivity is out of business; we stopped operations on June 30. We still have some leftover products for sale on Ebay.com; see user “ayrstoneproductivity” to see what we have left and to buy the remaining Ayrstone products, as well as things like Ethernet cables.

I have moved the Ayrstone.com website and this blog to a (much) less-expensive server, so the information there will continue to be available, including the troubleshooting and support information. AyrMesh.com will probably still be available until the end of August, but it will just disappear. Support.ayrstone.com (our Zendesk support platform) will also disappear, and there will be no one to answer any questions.

The troubleshooting and debugging information is on Ayrstone.com; if you are having trouble making the transition from AyrMesh.com to manual configuration, there are pretty comprehensive instructions available. One warning: read the directions FULLY and follow them CAREFULLY for best results.

What happened at the end of June

At the end of June, we sent a small script to all the AyrMesh devices that saved their current configuration and then turned off the checkin to AyrMesh.com. Unfortunately, I messed it up and not all devices saved their configuration, which caused them to revert to the default configuration when they rebooted. I corrected the script, but many devices were affected. You can re-initialize the devices as long as AyrMesh.com is still running (at least through August, 2026) and recover them that way. Devices will check in to AyrMesh.com once, then drop off fully configured for manual configuration. You may not need to ever log into it again; if you do, you’ll use your AyrMesh.com username and password. IMPORTANT: if your AyrMesh.com username or password, or your SSID or passkey contain non-alphanumeric characters, change those fields before you click “submit” or the device may corrupt those fields.

Philosophical notes

We started this company because we could see the increasing role that data was having, even in 2010, in farming. The initial idea for this came when I had been working on ways to get RTK corrections quickly and reliably out to equipment in the field with the old “Freewave” 900 MHz. radios. There were already rumblings about the “Internet of Things,” which relies on good, widespread wireless access. I felt that meshing WiFi was a good, cheap, simple way to get wireless coverage across a farm for RTK, and it would have many other useful applications. I tested the idea and was even more convinced that it was a good approach; in a relatively radio-quiet environment the range of a “tuned” WiFi radio was surprising. Nothing in the following 16 years has dampened that belief – and I still believe AyrMesh delivered a good, inexpensive solution to spreading a wireless network across a farm.

There were problems, and they will remain for anyone who decides to try following in our footsteps. Installing the Hubs (access points) “up high and in the clear,” as we put it, is a challenge for a lot of users. There were a lot of folks who tried mounting the Hub on the side of the house and then were disappointed when the range was not what they expected. There were people who connected Hubs to networks that were not working right (or used the Hubs to extend signal to devices that “broke” the network), and then wondered why the Hub kept breaking down. I published my “Everything You Need to
Know About Networks and Routers (probably…)” slideshow to help folks understand how to use their networks, which sometimes helped. Getting people to follow the directions (“Yes, the Hubs need to be AT LEAST half a mile apart if they’re going to work well”) remained a challenge.

By far my most common problem and biggest disappointment was Ethernet cables. I cannot express how much I came to despise bad Ethernet cables. They caused an endless stream of problems – the customer would complain their Hub was not working, but worked fine when it was brought down and connected to the power supply with a short cable. There are people who sell cheap “CCA” (Copper-Clad Aluminum) Ethernet cables (and other poorly-made cables) on Amazon, and I want to do terrible, terrible things to them.

But there were also other disappointments worth mentioning. First is the quality of the hardware we bought. We started out buying radios from Ubiquiti, which contracts manufacturing to several plants in China and supervises the manufacture of their products carefully. The hardware still failed from time to time, but they were generally good about replacing it. When Ubiquiti got in trouble and exited the “OEM” business, we were forced to buy radios from other vendors. Some had higher quality than others, but it was clear that no one was sending us their best units. We caught a lot of problems with the radios we purchased, but there were some cases where we got units that didn’t fail until they were out on the field. That was both expensive to fix and damaging to our reputation. But, of course, we were always the “small fish in a big pond,” so we were unable to dictate any terms to the manufacturers.

Finally, there’s “Bill’s Law of technology products;” after 40 years of this, I’m confident I’m right when I say, “Building good technology products is hard. Marketing technology products is very, very hard.” We thought it would be easier because we were marketing to a readily-identifiable subsection of the population: the 30 million or so rural residents of the U.S. and, particularly, the 3 million or so farmers. Since the market is small, even at higher “CPM” (Cost per thousand impressions) we could reach that limited audience with our marketing messages at a cost we could afford. In theory, it’s a good strategy for a small company: focus on a “niche” and dominate it.

Of course, we needed to advertise. Putting ads in the ag mags was an easy matter, of course, but the response from those ads was not nearly enough to pay for the advertising. We quickly realized that tiny ads in the back of the magazines actually “pulled” better than bigger ads in the main copy, which was interesting, but the magazines just don’t sell things any more – you have to be online, of course.

So we had to use Google ads – Meta (Facebook and Instagram) has grown in the last few years, and Microsoft has made some inroads, but, especially when we started, there was no way to reach a significant audience without Google ads. And Google ads has always been a big, opaque black box into which you shovel money and hope for the best. I have talked to “experts” in Google ads multiple times, but I have never found a way to narrow down the reach to exactly the people we were trying to reach, and, thus, we were seldom able to advertise effectively to our target audience at a cost we could afford. We were always spending much more on advertising than was justified by our revenues, so we were always living on the tiniest margins because of that advertising cost.

There are undoubtedly people out there with better online advertising skills who might be able to do what I was never able to do (consistently). Our social media presence was also generally weak. We had a social media manager for a while, and that helped a lot, but good social media is much like good PR: it’s a lot of work, and it requires dedicated resources. Again, someone could probably do a much better job on social media, and it would help bring the “Cost of Customer Acquisition” down.

But I’m old, and fighting these several battles simultaneously has tired me out. I don’t have the burning desire to break through these barriers any more. I had hoped that someone with more talent in some or all of these areas would take over Ayrstone and drive it forward. No such person has appeared, so we’re moving toward liquidating the business.

To be clear, if I wasn’t earlier: I still believe in the value of Ayrstone’s mission. I’d love to be able to expand that mission from just the WiFi “infrastructure” to more “IOT” devices and, thereby, into farm automation. When autonomous farm equipment becomes a reality on American farms, I still believe meshing WiFi will be the right solution for Machine to Machine (“M2M”) communications. I’m just not able to commit to making all that happen any more.

I’ll be happy to provide advice and assistance to anyone who wants to take up this mantle and bring good outdoor WiFi to the agricultural market, although my first piece of advice would be, “acquire Ayrstone’s Intellectual Property.” If you are interested, or know someone who is, I’m easy to find on LinkedIn.

Farewell, I truly wish you well

This is the last you’ll hear from me. My current plan is to quietly retire – into the mountains, pack on my back, dog at my side – and back to my workshop. I’m still a geek at heart, so I’ll still be playing with technology; if I find something interesting, I’ll try to let you know (perhaps on FarmHack or somewhere like that).

Thank you all for 16 great years with Ayrstone. It has been a privilege to serve you.

-Bill Moffitt, “President Emeritus” of Ayrstone Productivity, LLC.

A Wireless Farm Network is simply a wireless data network used to move data around on a farm. Do you have a Wireless Farm Network? Do you have more than one? Do you need one? Do you need more than one?

You may be thinking, “a WHAT??? Is this the new buzzword from some Silicon Valley company that’s going to be gone in a week?”

But it’s not a buzzword or an advertising slogan; I argue that it will be as indispensable as the tractor, but something you will use all the time, in-season and out. In fact, you may already have one or more Wireless Farm Networks.

The Past

When we started on AyrMesh 15 years ago, people scoffed at the idea of a wireless network to cover an entire farm. “Why would a farmer need WiFi?” was a frequent question we received, and we patiently explained to anyone still listening that farming was going to become much more data-driven and much more automated over time. Farmers would need networks to move that data and enable automation, and the world has pretty much settled on Internet Protocol (IP) as the normal way to move data. Burying Ethernet cables and fiber across the farm is not really practical, so farms would be using wireless networks, and WiFi is simply the only feasible choice.

The funny part is that a lot of farmers already had rudimentary Wireless Farm Networks even then. I had come out of the auto-steering industry, and we had used 900 MHz. data radios to transmit corrections from RTK bases out to the “rover” units on tractors, sprayers, and combines. We even made “repeater” units to enable a very rudimentary “mesh” with those units. Some farmers used those same radios (which connected to RS-232 serial ports) to monitor weather stations, soil moisture probes, and to control irrigation systems.

In the mid-2000s, some vendors started to come out with soil monitoring systems based on 802.15.4 (Zigbee and others) meshing – very low-power, low-bandwidth intended for home automation. It was somewhat useful, especially for smaller operations and specialty crops, but quite a number of companies went out of business trying to make a market for these products.

Later, a company called Cycleo introduced products similar to Zigbee (low-power, low-bandwidth) called “LoRa,” but, instead of using meshing, they used good antennas and very low bandwidth to achieve very long range – up to 6.2 miles (10 KM). Cycleo was acquired by Semtech, which put a lot of marketing push behind LoRa and LoRaWAN. Several companies have adopted LoRa as a farm network of sorts for communicating to very low-power, low-bandwidth devices like sensors and simple controllers, and it works very well for sensors and other devices that need to run for long times on batteries and don’t need to use much data.

In 2010, Ayrstone introduced our first generation of AyrMesh Hubs for meshing WiFi, with the current Hub2 line coming out in 2013. WiFi has the advantages of being:

• Low cost – WiFi access points like the AyrMesh Hubs are based on very high-volume chips and designs, so can be made quite inexpensive
• Standard – There are a lot of things that can use WiFi – phones, tablets, laptops, cameras, sensors, actuators – because it’s an international standard, there are myriad vendors for the base technology (WiFi radios) that can be integrated into literally millions of products
• High Bandwidth – Even long-range WiFi like AyrMesh can achieve bandwidth in the tens of millions of bits per second (Mpbs), much more than the thousands of bits per second (Kbps) like the old data radios or hundreds of thousands of bits per second like LoRa.
• Low latency – since WiFi uses an IP network, devices on the network can “talk” to each other, as well as to the Internet, and latencies (the time it takes for data to get from one device on the network to another) are typically a few milliseconds.
• Familiar – everyone has WiFi in their homes, businesses, stores, cafes, restaurants, and many cities even have municipal WiFi for public use. Everyone has it and knows how it works.

The Present

Currently, all these technologies are still in use, in varying degrees. There are still 4800 and 9600 “baud” data radios on some farms and there are still some “Zigbee” networks out there, but they are disappearing because they have been eclipsed by more modern technologies. Perhaps more importantly, most of those radios were designed so they’d only work with the same vendor’s radios, and most of the vendors for these systems have stopped building those products or gone out of business, so replacements are unavailable.

Cellular has become a viable alternative in some places, but, first, the cellular network is not under the control of the grower, it’s under the control of the service provider, so they decide the coverage and the available bandwidth. Also, every device using the cellular network requires a “subscription” with the carrier, and those costs can add up very quickly. Finally, cellular data goes directly to the public Internet; there is no option to keep your data on the farm. You may be able to pull your data off “the cloud” and onto a device on your farm, but it will have to go up to “the cloud” somewhere.

Recently, satellite connections have come to market as an alternative – I know of at least one autonomous sprayer company using satellite data communications. While satellite data solves the problem of having to be close to a cellular tower, they require clear line-of-sight to the sky, which can limit effectiveness in some situations. All devices connecting to the satellite also need subscriptions, so this cannot be an effective solution for applications requiring significant numbers of devices (e.g. soil sensing).

While LoRa and other low-bandwidth modes may be useful for some situations (again, soil sensing as an example), there are still important reasons to have a WiFi network. A WiFi network can provide “backhaul” for a LoRa-type network, so the LoRa gateway does not need to be connected to the cellular network, as is common now. As noted earlier, there are many, many devices that can connect to WiFi, from phones to security cameras to weather stations and other sensors. Very few devices can connect to LoRa, and the vendor may exclude devices other than their own from connecting to their network. Once you have a WiFi network across your farm, you have a lot of flexibility for easily adding a lot of different devices from a wide variety of vendors because WiFi is a global standard.

Importantly, WiFi is still evolving – modern 802.11ax (WiFi 6) is fully compatible with older versions of WiFi like 802.11n, but offers greater efficiency for improved bandwidth and reliability. 802.11ax also includes features like Target Wait Time (TWT), which allows battery-operated devices like sensors to connect while using minimal power, much like LoRa, effectively eliminating the need for a second “sensor network.” Building your Wireless Farm Network now will give you good connectivity today, and future-proofing for tomorrow.

There is a danger of different products using different networks, leading to the presence of numerous Wireless Farm Networks on a farm. Vendors have wanted to be able to “own” the entire installation for their products, including the wireless network they use. The upshot is that you can end up with one wireless network for soil sensors, another for your grain bins, another for autonomous machinery, etc. The end result is a tower like the lead graphic for this blog post: a Gordian Knot of complexity, with vendors fighting each other (and blaming each other) and no control for the grower.

I want to encourage all AgTech vendors, and I want farmers to encourage the vendors they work with, to simplify and use WiFi as the wireless network (or at least an optional wireless network) for new AgTech products. If a product depends on cellular data connections, recognize that limits its usefulness for the vast majority of farms and build in an inexpensive, universally-applicable WiFi alternative. We’ll help. Similarly, if your product is using LoRa, look at using 802.11ax instead to drive down cost, complexity, and vendor lock-in.

I’ll be at World Ag Expo next week; if you’re going to be there, please drop me a line at [email protected] and let’s try to meet up.

We have always focused on the longest range in the AyrMesh Hubs – best possible range to any given WiFi device, as well as maximizing the range (distance) between the Hubs to cover the maximum area.

And that has worked really well – tens of thousands of people across North America have gotten AyrMesh Hubs and have set up WiFi networks on their farms to enjoy outdoor WiFi for convenience, security, and productivity.

A small number of customers have been frustrated by the Hub’s long range, however, because the AyrMesh Hubs do not work well if they’re too close together. Some customers have more intricate central areas on the farm where they need to have several WiFi access points to “fill in” around buildings and other structures. It’s usually impossible to successfully place the AyrMesh Hubs within half a mile of each other, and that was much too large a span for many of these facilities. By reducing the power, we could enable customers to put the Hubs within 400 yards of one another, but, for many customers, that was still too far apart to support their physical plant.

AyrMesh HubDuo Modes

Because the AyrMesh HubDuo has both long-range 2.4 GHz. and high-bandwidth 5.8 GHz. radios, we have the option of moving the meshing from the 2.4 GHz. signal to the 5.8 GHz. signal, which allows the HubDuos to be placed much closer to one another – as close as a few hundred feet.

To support this, we have introduced four “modes” for the AyrMesh HubDuo, selectable in the “Network” section of your account on AyrMesh.com:

• Normal mode – Compatible with the AyrMesh Hub2 series (Hub2n, Hub2T, Hub2x2, Hub2x2C) – meshing on the 2.4 GHz. signal. This mode works just like the other AyrMesh Hubs, with the addition of a 5.8 GHz. WiFi signal for shorter-range higher-speed connectivity.
• Close mode moves the mesh signal to 5.8 GHz. so the HubDuo units can be placed much closer together. Transmission signal strengths are reduced, to avoid having the Hubs “overwhelm” each other when they’re closer. Both the 2.4 GHz. and 5.8 GHz. WiFi signals are available for use.
• Hybrid mode makes both bands available for mesh signals on the Gateway Hub, with Remote HubDuos only meshing on the 5.8 GHz. mesh. This allows a close-in mesh of HubDuo units meshing on the 5.8 GHz. signal and a further-away mesh of Hub2 units on the 2.4 GHz. signal.
• Access Point Only mode – this mode turns meshing off entirely. This is useful in cases where existing infrastructure exists to distribute connectivity around the area and only outdoor WiFi is needed from the Hubs.

It’s very easy to select the HubDuo mode in AyrMesh.com – under “My Networks” click on the pencil to edit your network settings. At the bottom of the panel, you’ll see “HubDuo Mode” – select the mode you want from the dropdown menu.

For more information, see the article on Ayrstone.com or the support information on our support site. Or just get an AyrMesh HubDuo today!

Coupon code

To make it easier, we’re offering 15{6d84e97b9d70a88c7827a68919bdc428927c26a1a62ff29e804188d6763d834c} off Ayrstone AyrMesh Hubs, Receivers, IndoorHubs, and Bridges until the end of the year. Just use coupon code “ayrxmas” on your order on Ayrstone.com.

Happy holidays to all – we’re looking forward to a great 2025!