Author Archives: billmoffitt

The hard part of wireless networking: the wires.

It’s actually an old joke in the wireless networking world: what’s the worst part of wireless networking? The wires!

(OK, it’s an old dumb joke…)

While having WiFi all over the farm is incredibly useful, the only way to make it happen is using Ethernet cables. While Ethernet cables are very simple devices, there are an amazing number of variations and types of Ethernet cables, an choosing the wrong ones (or using them poorly) can cost you time and money.

What is an Ethernet cable?

Courtesy of WikiMedia

Ethernet cables all have some common characteristics: they contain 4 pairs of wires, with each pair twisted around each other (so they are called “twisted-pair” cables). They have an outer sheath to protect the wires inside and they use RJ-45 connectors to connect to networking devices.

The 4 pairs of wires inside the sheath are usually colored green, brown, blue, and orange – one solid and one striped for each color. The wires are usually 100{8fd1ffa65f67a2e931916b3c1288d51eed07dc30586a565c92d055673de7c64e} copper, but some cheaper cables are made of alloys. Alloy cable works OK for short lengths, but should not be used for cables longer than 25 feet. There is sometimes an uninsulated wire running down the middle of the cable called a “drain wire” – this is meant to provide a common ground for the equipment the cable is connected to.

The wires are usually about 24 gauge (AWG), but some cheaper cables use 26 gauge wire, and some more expensive cables use 22 gauge wire. Obviously, the bigger the wire the better, as long as it’s pure copper, but bigger wire also makes heavier cables. It makes a difference if you’re hauling it up a ladder, believe me.

Kinds of Ethernet Cables

Under the sheath, some cables have a shield made of metallic braid or foil. This shield keeps outside noise from penetrating the cable and disrupting the signal on the wires. Unshielded cables are designated as “UTP” (Unshielded Twisted Pair), while shielded cables are designated “STP” (Shielded Twisted Pair). Our experience shows that any cable over 25 feet should be shielded to prevent corruption of the data on the wires and maintain the speed of the data.

You will see, shopping for Ethernet cables, that there are several “Categories” of cable – Cat 5, Cat 5e, and Cat 6 are the common ones available now. The differences are in the speed rating of the cables – Cat 5 can pass data at 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps, Cat 5e can pass data at 10, 100, or 1000 Mbps, and Cat 6 can go up to 10 Gbps. Any of these will work well with AyrMesh equipment – we usually buy Cat5e cables because they are less expensive and widely available. The main physical differences in the cables is how tightly the wire pairs are twisted together.

Finally, the sheath itself can differ quite widely. The normal sheath is usually a form of polyolefin, which does not burn easily. “Plenum-rated” and “Riser-rated” sheaths are coated with a low-smoke PVC, which makes them even more flameproof and reduces the toxicity of the smoke if they do catch on fire. “Direct burial” cables generally have a very thick and heavy sheath, and they may contain a gel that prevents a nick or cut in the cable from admitting water into the cable. Obviously, if water gets into the cable, the wires can corrode and the cable will go bad, but direct burial cables are usually very stiff and very heavy, making them extremely difficult to work with.

Whichever cable you choose, it is imperative that you handle it correctly. Because the cable consists of a bunch of small wires, it is really no stronger than any of those wires. It’s very easy to get a kink in a cable when you’re pulling it through a hole, for instance, and break one of the wires. When that happens, the cable is generally useless.

General Guidelines for Ethernet cables used with AyrMesh products

Make sure the cables are all-copper and shielded (STP) if they’re 25 feet or longer.
Try to get 24 or 22 AWG wires in the cable.
Get plenum-rated or riser-rated cables for use indoors, but don’t use direct burial cables unless you’re going to bury them – they’re too hard to manage.
ALWAYS leave a “drip loop” when you’re bringing a cable run from outside to inside a building so water doesn’t run down the cable and ruin equipment!
Be VERY careful pulling cables – they are more fragile than they seem!

Using the Internet on the Farm

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It seems almost impossible now, but it wasn’t very many years ago that the typical farmer would have laughed if you said that he’ll need Internet access everywhere on the farm. The benefit of surfing websites (when they were just static information pages with pictures) was unclear, but the idea of carrying around a computer in your truck, tractor, sprayer, or combine was patently absurd. The dust, temperatures, and vibration were far too much for the computers of the time.

But then came the Blackberry, and everyone discovered the convenience of getting email on-the-go. So everyone realized they needed a Blackberry and constant access to email – why would you need anything else?

But the web grew up. More and more information was either available exclusively on the web, or was at least a lot more convenient to get on the web. Furthermore, it became about more than just getting information: you could increasingly actually DO things on the web – ordering parts and supplies, keeping records, planning, and even marketing. But laptops have never been practical on the farm: keyboards are too easily gummed up with dust, screens on hinges are too fragile, and they just take up too much space.

Then another device came along: the iPad. I have joked that EVERY farmer in America got an iPad for Christmas last year, and tablet computers like the iPad seem like they were made for farming. Adam Gittins has written an excellent blog post about the use of tablet computers in agriculture – the bottom line, though is that they are durable, easy to carry, and provide an excellent platform for using web applications.

Of course, they need to be connected to the Internet to be useful. Almost all the tablets on the market are available with some sort of cellular modem that allows them to access the Internet, but fast cellular data signals (“4G”) are rare in the rural U.S., and there are a lot of areas with only very slow or no cellular Internet access. Furthermore, a cellular modem does not provide you access to your Local Area Network (LAN) the way the AyrMesh network does. Finally, of course, the cellular options in the tablets cost extra, and the cellular companies like to charge quite a bit per month for Internet access.

Using the AyrMesh system, you can have fast WiFi access all over your farm, with access to your LAN for accessing the data sources and control mechanisms on your farm, and it makes your tablets and smartphones just that much more valuable.

AyrMesh for Precision Ag – collecting precision data from cab monitors

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Lots of data here…

Both of the founders of Ayrstone Productivity have backgrounds in precision agriculture, and one of the motivations we had in starting Ayrstone was to help growers access and use the data generated by all those in-cab monitors by giving them a way to capture all that data wirelessly. The information on those computers is a potential goldmine if you can use it quickly and easily to make smarter decisions about your operation.

When we were doing research about data collection, however, we learned that the vast majority of growers just left the CF cards in the cab monitors all season, because it was just too much bother to pull out the card, bring it in, out it on the computer, dump the data, store it (so you can find it again), and then remember to take it back out and put it back in the monitor before you go out to work again. Some vendors were starting to put cellular modems into their cab computers, but they are expensive in the first place and carry a pretty hefty monthly service fee with them. Furthermore, there are pretty substantial chunks of rural America without good cellular data service (which is usually separate from the voice service signal).

We proposed that a mesh WiFi network (like the AyrMesh network) could be a much more effective way to collect that data so it can be used for decision support. It can be extended wherever it needs to go for data collection, it doesn’t carry a monthly charge, and a WiFi adapter, even a high-power outdoor one, is much less expensive than a cellular modem.

Adam Gittins of HTSag has an interesting and thought-provoking blog post about collecting harvest data off his AgLeader console with the new AgFinity WiFi adapter. He is even able to see his harvest results when he’s not on the combine!

Thank you to Adam Gittins for this image

A little technical talk about WiFi

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Adam Gittins has published another terrific post on his Precision Ag Explained blog about problems he ran into getting his AyrMesh network up and running.

It reminds me that WiFi isn’t entirely straightforward, and some explanations of the vagaries are in order.

As Adam points out, interference is potentially a huge problem on WiFi. One problem is that the 2.4 GHz. WiFi band was partitioned out into 11 channels (in the U.S. and Canada), but most of those channels actually OVERLAP each other. There are only THREE DISTINCT CHANNELS: 1, 6, and 11 – all the other channels overlap at least one of these three (and each other). For a good explanation with graphics, I always recommend Wikipedia.

As he points out, if you have your “indoor” WiFi and your “outdoor” WiFi on the same channel, they’ll interfere with each other, reducing the range and bandwidth of both. Even if they are less than five channels apart this will happen to some degree. The AyrMesh network always comes by default on channel 6, so you can either change your home router’s channel to 1 or 11, or change the AyrMesh channel using your account on AyrMesh.com.

InSSIDer – courtesy of MetaGeek

We use and recommend a couple of tools to help discover WiFi interference. InSSIDer for Home is a free program that run on Windows, Mac, or Android, and shows all of the WiFi Access Points in range of the computer and a pretty good estimate of the signal strength of those Access Points. (NOTE: It has recently been pointed out that getting InSSIDer for Home from the Mac App Store actually costs $4.99)

WiFi Analyzer for Android, Courtesy of farproc

WiFi Analyzer is another free app that runs on Android. It’s a little simpler and quicker than InSSIDer, and has become my “go-to” solution for taking a “quick look around” on my phone.

It’s worth noting that there is no analogous app for the iPhone because Apple doesn’t allow direct access to the WiFi card. However, there are similar apps available if your iPhone is jailbroken.

Chanalyzer Spectrum Analysis, courtesy of Metageek

Just to make it a bit more interesting, however, I have to point out one more fact: WiFi is far from being the only thing using the 2.4 GHz radio band. Cordless phones, baby monitors, wireless surveillance cameras, certain radars, and microwave ovens all use the same spectrum, so they can all potentially interfere with your WiFi. This is, in fact, precisely why Metageek gives away InSSIDer – they sell tools called “Spectrum Analyzers” – their “Wi-Spy” Spectrum Analyzers are excellent and relatively inexpensive. They can show not just WiFi interference, but all the interference in the 2.4 GHz. band. They even offer a very nice “Wi-Spy mini” bundled with their “InSSIDer for Office” product for only $199.

You probably won’t need a spectrum analyzer for your AyrMesh network. Out in the country there’s very little interference, and it takes a while to learn how to use a spectrum analyzer effectively, even with Metageek’s excellent software.

However, getting a copy of InSSIDer and/or WiFi Analyzer is something I recommend to everyone who’s curious about their local WiFi environment.

Great post on “Precision Ag Explained”

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Not really Adam – just a picture I thought was funny.

Adam Gittins of HTS Ag got an AyrMesh Hub2n a few weeks back, and he has published a great post about it on the outstanding blog “Precision Ag Explained.” The post helps explain how Wireless Farm Networking is going to drive better and more efficient farm operations in his view.

Here’s hoping we can see a lot more from him in the future – we really appreciate having someone of his experience and expertise writing about Ayrstone.

New Ayrstone Product: the AyrMesh Hub2n

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Today is the second most exciting day of Ayrstone’s existence – second only to the day we started. The introduction of the Hub2n marks a new era in wireless farm networking – even though the white plastic case is exactly the same as the old Hub, and the electronics inside are fairly similar, the software running on those electronics make it truly revolutionary.

The most important and exciting thing about the new Hub2n is that it introduces the concept of the “transparent mesh.” This means that you can build out your AyrMesh network across your farm or other rural business or homestead, but all the devices attached to the Hubs and Receivers in your network get their IP addresses from the router your AyrMesh Gateway Hub2n is attached to. This means that building and managing your AyrMesh Network is no more difficult than building a home network with your home router. In particular:

Devices attached to your AyrMesh network will be in the same IP subnet as your router. If your router, for instance, is configured to create a private network with addresses of the form 192.168.1.x, then everything on your AyrMesh network will have IP addresses in that same form.
All devices on your network will appear in the DHCP table or client table of your router.
You can port forward from your router to any device in your network, whether it’s plugged directly into your router or miles away connected via WiFi to an AyrMesh Hub.

This means that, using the new Hub2n, you can easily build a farm-wide network that can be used for:

Internet access – even in places with no cellular signal
A reliable, high-bandwidth local-area network for remote sensors like cameras, thermometers, and weather stations, and
A high-speed, internet-accessible network to control devices like web-controlled relays and thermostats.

With the new Hub2n available, the revolution in Wireless Farm Networking can really pick up steam! Now there’s no reason not to have a farm-wide network to gather information and start automating operations on your farm.

A different approach to WiFi cameras: Dropcam

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I have been using a Dropcam for about a year now and have been very impressed with it. It is a very low-cost WiFi IP camera that, instead of offering local viewing through a webserver on the device, automatically streams its video to Dropcam’s servers, where you can view the video from anywhere on the Internet.

Just to review, the way a “normal” IP camera works is that it has a webserver on the device, and you access that webserver in order to view the video from the camera. For instance, if you connect the camera to your router, you’ll check the router to find its IP address – let’s say, for instance, that it’s 192.168.1.47.

You then use a web browser to view http://192.168.1.47, and your camera shows up there. However, if you want to view your camera from outside your network, you have to “port forward” a port to the web port on the camera. A number of factors can make that operation difficult.

The Dropcam does away with all of that, because the camera is only attached to your computer with a USB cable ONCE for configuration (it gets the WiFi configuration from your computer – mine uses the WiFi signal from my Remote Hub out in my workshop), then it joins your network and streams its video to dropcam.com. The camera and dropcam.com website have proven to be very reliable.

It is powered with a mini USB cable (5 volts), which is included, along with a wall plug USB power adapter.

Dropcam allows you to view the video from your camera for free on your dropcam.com account. If you want to record the video so you can go back and look at past video (e.g. for security purposes), they have inexpensive recording subscriptions.

They have a number of demo cameras set up – including a nice one looking out a window onto Monterey Bay in California. While I couldn’t find a demo camera on a farm, this gives you a nice idea of how good the picture is and what the interface looks like – very good, very easy to use.

The Dropcam is very good, but it’s far from perfect. The big advantages are:

Easy to set up and use
Small, lightweight, inexpensive
Transmits video AND audio – look and listen
IOS and Android apps for viewing cameras
Visible over the Internet, no port forwarding

However, it has a few very salient disadvantages:

Not suitable for outdoor use – indoor use only
No local access – you HAVE to be connected to the Internet to view the camera
Fixed lens – no telephoto, no wide angle, no point/tilt/zoom
A couple of seconds delay between the camera and the video stream

If you have a place you want to keep an eye on, Dropcam is an excellent choice. The quality of the camera and picture is comparable to my “favorite” indoor camera, the Axis M1033-W. As you can see, although the camera has to be indoors, it does a nice job showing outdoor scenes if it can be placed inside a window.

Dropcam is, potentially, a very useful tool for your home and farm.

New Ayrstone Product: the AyrMesh Receiver

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Today we’re announcing a new product in the Ayrstone AyrMesh line: the AyrMesh Receiver.

The AyrMesh Receiver is actually, of course, more than a receiver – it transmits and receives data – but it is designed as a simple, low-cost way to put one or more “wired” (Ethernet) devices onto an AyrMesh network. It is very similar to our AyrMesh Hub, but with a couple of important differences:

The AyrMesh Receiver connects to the Hub’s WiFi signal, not the wireless mesh signal.
The AyrMesh Receiver does not create its own WiFi access point – it is a client device only
The AyrMesh Receiver uses a directional antenna for maximum range – it can be positioned up to 2 miles away from an AyrMesh Hub (optimal conditions).

Typical uses for the AyrMesh Receiver include:

Using high-end IP cameras or other network devices that do not have WiFi
Bringing the AyrMesh network inside of metal buildings – an AyrMesh Receiver can be placed on the outside of the building and devices inside can be connected to the LAN port of the receiver. You can even put a WiFi access point inside the building so you have WiFi indoors as well as outdoors.
Connecting devices like network-enabled weather stations in more distant fields – since the AyrMesh Receiver can be up to 2 miles from your furthest Hub, you can now include areas in your network that were previously unreachable.

The AyrMesh Receiver is available now from Ayrstone – please see our website for details.

Wireless Farm Networking: what and why

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A few years ago, we identified a real need in the agricultural market for more robust, internet-connected farm networks. This was driven by our work in precision agriculture; what we saw was that there was a glut of usable data that could be helping growers make better (and more profitable) decisions, but that data was mostly trapped on personal computers and in-cab monitors.

As we looked at this situation, we realized there were two equally important needs which were interrelated: the first is a comprehensive platform for turning all this raw data into actionable information, and the second was a facility for collecting the data and putting it to use. But there’s a “chicken and egg” problem here: if you don’t have the data, you can’t turn it into information, but there’s no good way to collect and use the data currently.

The AyrMesh Hub

So we decided to tackle the second problem: create an “Enterprise Network” for farmers and ranchers, so they could collect data from their farm operations effortlessly and use that data to make more informed decisions. We realized, of course, that a typical network was not going to work for the farm: everything is very far apart, so laying cable (or even fiber) is generally not a workable solution. Besides, the network should ideally encompass the tractors, sprayers, and harvesters out working in the fields, so wireless is the only option. This was the impetus that gave birth to the original AyrMesh Hub.

The idea was fairly simple: take some of the ideas used in the “Roofnet” project at M.I.T. and adapt them to building a low-cost wireless mesh network for farm use. The key requirements were:

Use WiFi – other, proprietary mesh networks had been tried, but they require a wireless “client” device for anything you want to put on the network. Lots of things have WiFi today – it’s an easy, familiar, open technology
Design the system for a farm – provide good bandwidth to relatively few “clients” spread over a very wide area. Most WiFi devices in the market today are designed for exactly the opposite: a metropolitan mesh network, where you have many people in a very small area and high bandwidth demands.

What we have seen is that, like all technologies, there is an adoption curve. The first step is the desire to use one’s Internet connection beyond the confines of the house. Especially with the advent of smartphones and tablet computers like the iPad, the ability to have instant information and communications everywhere you go on the farm can be a reality, even if cellular data is not available everywhere on your farm.

A WiFi Camera

The second step is connecting sensors to the network to “keep an eye out” on your farm. The most popular and demanded sensor, of course, is the IP camera. The ability to bring up a view of an area of your farm, whether to see the settings on the grain dryer, keep an eye on livestock (especially in the middle of the night), or as the basis for a security system, cameras seem to have a place on every farm. But, moving forward, putting network-connected environmental sensors in livestock buildings and distant fields can bring terrific pro

A Weather Station at the edge of a field

ductivity gains. Knowing the temperature and humidity in your livestock barns can help optimize your HVAC usage, while knowing the wind and rainfall in a distant field can save a trip if it’s too windy or too wet to work.

Lots of data here…

In addition, some of the precision agriculture vendors are starting to put WiFi into their in-cab monitors, so you can access the data on those monitors over the network instead of having to move cards or USB sticks around. Being able to access your “as applied” and harvest data allows you (or your agronomist) to much more easily determine your variable rate applications as you go through the season, potentially cutting your costs and maximizing your yield.

Network-controlled relay, courtesy controlbyweb.com

The third step is farm control: being able to actually get things done on the farm over the network. Grain dryers, pumps, irrigation systems, HVAC systems, and other equipment could be controlled over the network. This means that you can potentially control your grain dryer from the bedroom, or even while you’re running errands in town, since your network is connected to the Internet.

What we learned in the 1990s and 2000s when networks were becoming ubiquitous in the corporate world is that the presence of the network creates opportunities to improve the business in unexpected ways. We don’t pretend to know what all the uses are for a wireless farm network, but we’re very excited to see what they are. We’re here at the very beginning of farm networking, and the future is limitless.

Welcome to the Ayrstone Blog!

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This is me, but I’ll probably never look this good again.

This is what it’s about: Ayrstone on the farm. This is Matt Hughes’s farm in IL

This is a blog about Ayrstone, our products, networking, particularly wireless networking, the internet, farm/ranch management, and whatever else we find interesting. The primary author is Bill Moffitt, President and Chief technical guy for Ayrstone Productivity.

As Ayrstone customers who have spoken to me can attest, my interests are many and varied, but they always circle back to ways to get things done better, cheaper, safer, and more effectively. I am a strong proponent of technology, but I’m not really what you might call an “enthusiast.” I think of myself more as a crash-test dummy: I want to try new things, see what the potential is, and then talk about what I find (good or bad). The nice thing about this is, I hope, I can find things that are genuinely helpful. The bad part, of course, is that you may not always agree with my assessment. But, of course, that’s what makes this interesting: I expect some lively comments and discussions about the relative merits of different approaches here.

Just so you know what to expect, I’m a “machine gun” writer: I’ll go a long time without writing anything, and then I’ll put up several posts in rapid succession.

I welcome your comments, both positive and negative. This world of networking on the farm has a lot of big, new opportunities, and I hope I can help you make the most of it.

If so, I’ll have done my job.