#147 - Vision A.I. Sensor + 2023 IA National Convention

[00:00:01] What's that Sam? Shhh! He's very quiet! Wow. Wow. Quarter mile from the Irrigation Association National Convention is a massive leak. Massive water leak. Let's say you're a water saver. I guess it was about 20 gallons a minute based on my sound and sight. Where's it going? Down the drain.

[00:00:51] Right through the storm drain over there on the other side. Dang! If you are an irrigation professional, old or new, who designs, installs, or maintains high-end residential commercial or municipal properties and you want to use technology to improve your business to get a leg up on your competition,

[00:01:14] even if you're an old-school irrigator from the days of hydraulic systems, this show is for you. Welcome back to The Sprinkler Nerd Show. I'm your host Andy Humphrey. Today is December 1st, 2023 Friday, the day after the ending of the National Irrigation Convention and Expo or Expo and Convention

[00:01:40] coming to you from the 19th floor of the Hilton Hotel overlooking the convention center and recording this just before I get on my flight today and then on the flight, I'll edit it up. So if you're hearing this, it probably launched sometime in the after noon.

[00:01:55] And what I wanted to do today was give you a quick summary of not only the irrigation convention but also a couple cool projects that I worked on this week. And before I do that, something interesting happened last night and sometimes you find the most

[00:02:12] sort of, you find sparks of inspiration when you are least expecting it. So quick story, last night before Paul Bassett and I left the hotel to go up to what looks like a space needle. I'm not sure exactly what it's called, but there's an observatory

[00:02:29] that looks like the Seattle Space Needle right here by the convention center. And we went up there to the bar. I was waiting for Paul to grab something in the room. I was just, you know, killing time. Looked at a couple plaques

[00:02:42] or placards in the hallway at the Hilton and one of these really struck, got my attention and it was almost like I was reading something that I would write or I had written. I wanted to read it for you because it inspired me

[00:02:58] and it might inspire you as well. So what I'm going to read to you is called My Philosophy. And again, that's why this is so strange because it's almost as if this is also my philosophy, me and Andy, my philosophy.

[00:03:11] But it's called My Philosophy written by Pat Zachary. He's the founder of HB Zachary Company. He built this Houghton, this Houghton, this Hilton hotel. And I'll read it for you now. I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon

[00:03:29] if I can. I seek opportunity, not security. I will refuse to be kept a citizen to be humbled and dulled by having my state and nation look after me. I want to dream and to build to fail and to succeed. Never to be numbered among those weak

[00:03:52] and timid souls who have known neither victory nor defeat. I know that happiness can come only from the inside through hard, constructive work and sincere positive thinking. I know that the so-called pleasures of the moment should not be confused with a state of happiness.

[00:04:14] I know that I can get a measure of inner satisfaction from any job if I intelligently plan and courageously execute it. I know that if I put forth every iota of strength that I possess physical, mental, spiritual toward the accomplishment of a worthwhile task,

[00:04:37] ere I fall exhausted by the wayside the unseen hand will reach out and pull me through. Yes, I want to live dangerously. Plan my procedures on the basis of calculated risks to resolve the problems of everyday living into a measure of inner peace. I know, if I know

[00:05:02] how to do all this, I know how to live. And if I know how to live, I will know how to die. So, if you want to hear that again, just roll back 30 seconds. But that is an amazing quote. I will probably put just that

[00:05:20] quote or just that text block in the show notes. So instead of having an entire transcript for this episode, I think I'm going to put that quote in the show notes and again HB Zachary Company this was Pat Zachary and this hotel

[00:05:38] which is called the Palacio Del Rio which is the Hilton is known as pioneer of futuristic construction systems. So this hotel at the time was built using futuristic construction systems and obviously by listening to that quote this man Pat Zachary definitely probably exuded everything

[00:06:03] that you just heard. So let me give you the run down for this week came down here on Tuesday and with my friend Paul Bassett he has a water meter project here in San Antonio at the Pearl and they were switching out 70 something water meters

[00:06:21] or not only switching but adding meters to all the sub-metering pipes so that the client, the pearl knows where all their water is going but there are a number of meters large meters in meter pits that they did not replace

[00:06:33] because the cost of replacement is too expensive and there really wasn't a way to capture the data from the main water meters and so he and I came up with a plan to develop actually not develop the sensor but develop the custom algorithm to get

[00:06:51] the water meter data off the meter using something called vision AI technology what that means is we put a device over the water meter and the device has tiny ML edge AI enabled which is an image, a smart image sensor and it takes

[00:07:09] a picture of the digits in the dial takes a picture of it and then the edge AI is right on the device so we can train it to understand what is on the image and send us the data. So instead of sending an entire image

[00:07:27] to us to read it will only send the data and what that means is we had to build a mount put the little sensor camera over the meter and then let it start recording or when I say recording taking images of the meter so that we could

[00:07:42] train it to learn what a 5 looked like what the 6 o'clock position on the dial looked like etc. so that when we deploy it it just simply takes a picture on an interval and then it sends us the data and we brought our friend Travis out of Houston

[00:08:00] he's a, he's definitely a, can't call him a sprinkler nerd but he is a tech nerd so he knows how to program all this develop the algorithms so we hired him to come up from Houston to help us develop this and that's what we did Tuesday afternoon

[00:08:18] special shout out to Andrew and William from ANW Irrigation Service that were super interested in this and came by the site to check out what we were doing and also gave them a demo sensor new demo wireless

[00:08:33] that we're working on so appreciate seeing you guys thanks for coming out and the day after that Paul and I had to go back to the site we basically spent the entire day and a half at the Pearl working on this

[00:08:45] vision AI sensor technology and as soon as it's done then I can share more about it it's a little bit more difficult in a meter pit because it's dark and so we also have to plan to install some low, low energy or low power LED

[00:08:57] illumination so that the camera can actually see the meter head but if this were indoors we could deploy this relatively cost, affordably on any meter to read the data remotely without having to have any wires coming out of it

[00:09:12] clamp on sensor etc. It'll just take a picture of the meter head turn it into the values and send the values up to our cloud platform on the first night before the show started Op Connect was gracious enough to host a welcome party it was super fun

[00:09:30] a lot of people came out and that was the night that I also had the let's say the soft launch for beta users of our new wireless little moisture sensor project that we've been working on and it was really nice to look over the shoulder

[00:09:48] of users as they created an account as they claim the device so that I could see how they used it where they got stuck how we could improve the process, how we could make less clicks how we could streamline it and make it easier

[00:10:03] to create an account onboard sensors that was really helpful to just look over the shoulder of users and special shout out to Kyle Brose from Proceige Pop Ups Kyle is also the current president of the Canadian Prairie Chapter of the Irrigation Association

[00:10:21] and Shane Williams from Mount Royal University they have a lot of interest in not only soil moisture sensor technology but it just seems like a lot of interest in new innovation new ways to tackle things that they haven't seen before

[00:10:39] so I appreciate you guys thank you for coming out coming up to your event this winter ok on to the actual show so we went to the show yesterday which is Thursday all day pretty much, I don't know that I saw all of the show

[00:10:57] and I can't report on every single booth but what I wanted to do is provide an update of a couple things that caught my attention a couple takeaways and I think after events like this a conference that you go to or a trade show

[00:11:12] or an expo sometimes it's nice to take notes right after the show so you can remember what was top of mind because six months later it's tough to remember any of this so not only is it my intent for

[00:11:24] this podcast to be informative for you but it's also a great way for me to kind of do a data dump of what's in my mind so that I can recall it in the future so you can see my first general impression

[00:11:39] is that there was more technology at the show than ever before and there was more soil moisture sensors than ever before and again this is through my lens so this may not be true it may be that I'm subconsciously either looking or seeing

[00:12:00] soil moisture sensors because of the project that I'm working on or they're just in fact were more soil moisture sensors there most of the soil moisture sensors that were there are wired and you wire it back to a data logger most of them were for agriculture however

[00:12:18] there is one let's see how do I describe how do I want to describe this company a company Smart Rain and I would describe them as a an incumbent in the commercial central control cloud based irrigation control category and Smart Rain was I guess

[00:12:41] soft releasing it's not ready yet but they are manufacturing a wireless soil moisture sensor that is compatible with their platform and what I like about what they're doing is they're putting a Lora gateway inside the controller that they can

[00:12:55] then can use backhaul up to the cloud through their controller and then they can access soil moisture sensors and what's awesome about Smart Rain doing this is it validates soil moisture sensors the more companies that start using soil moisture sensors the more the technology gets

[00:13:13] validated the more all of us can learn and the more we can start using the right tools for the job so thank you Smart Rain for releasing a wireless soil moisture sensor a rising tide raises all ships that's how I feel that's what I feel is coming

[00:13:31] for our industry the the age of sensors is beginning and Smart Rain is starting to raise that tide by releasing theirs and what I would expect to happen in the coming years is for another manufacturer another manufacturer another manufacturer to use soil moisture sensors so that it becomes

[00:13:52] the new standard for automated watering and it's very validating for me because of course I've been educating and teaching people how to use soil moisture sensors for 20 years with the baseline system and it's just validating to see it finally coming because we spent a long time having to

[00:14:15] sort of be patient while the industry moved in the direction of weather based controls in ET and it's been a it is hard to be patient for the amount of time that we've had to be patient and we I think we will see the education level

[00:14:33] rise across all irrigation and water managers because right now we operate on a set of assumptions and when I say a set of assumptions you may have heard me say this before that when we put a program on a controller that is our best educated

[00:14:51] guesstimate for what that run time start time day of the week should be but other than a soil moisture sensor there are currently no tools to validate whether that best assumption was accurate was 33 minutes on Tuesday and Thursday correct was 30 minutes the right amount of run time

[00:15:15] by adding a soil moisture sensor it adds that level of validation so you can see the cause and effect of the watering you can learn you can make adjustments and over time you become a better irrigator

[00:15:27] so long wind away of saying I'm very happy to see the amount of soil moisture sensors in the market very happy to see another beyond and besides baseline another company beginning to use soil moisture sensors to understand their platform so let's let me give a quick

[00:15:48] run down a couple of things that caught my attention in the new product contest and I do I don't know who won the new product contest and I guess I don't I'll take this the wrong way it's not that I don't really care

[00:16:03] but I'm more interested to see the products that are there the product and the technology that wins and I'm very meaningful to me I kind of just like to see the things that are listed in the new product area so first I'll start with my friends

[00:16:18] my good friends at baseline very happy to see the substation RV and the substation CP in the new product contest area and for those not familiar with the baseline control platform there is a main controller which is called the 3200 and then from the controller you can communicate wirelessly

[00:16:36] to a another device called a substation which is a two wire extension if you will through the cloud you can fully operate an entire system wirelessly through the cloud and baseline has released the RV version which is remote valve so if you have one valve

[00:16:55] in a median you can put the substation RV there wirelessly link it back to the controller and the same is true for the CP which stands for control point so if you have a remote flow sensor or a remote

[00:17:08] master valve and that could be from a city supply or perhaps there is a pump station on the other side of the development and you don't have any wires you can add the substation CP wirelessly to that pump station and integrate it with

[00:17:23] the control platform and there are no limits because the data is flowing through the cloud via cellular in real time and I do want to point out that with the baseline system the substations and these wireless components operate in real time and that's important

[00:17:41] because as we see new wireless devices come into the market real time is actually quite difficult because it needs to be connected 24 7 and that uses quite a bit of power so as we start looking at low power long range devices like Laura those devices typically do not

[00:18:02] operate in real time unless they're listed on Class C continuous connection but then it uses a lot of power and generally you would need to plug it in so if you were looking if you were trying to use a long range low power low battery solution

[00:18:17] you generally don't get real time data which can often be fine for valves but when you're looking at flow information and if you want to run zones concurrently and you want to manage a hydraulic infrastructure

[00:18:28] then you need to have real time data and so it's great to see baseline with real time data wireless solutions to manage flow and valves. Alright, next up there was a very simple product by NDS it's called the Sure-Fit Universal Lid

[00:18:46] and although this is not a piece of technology what I like about it is we at sprinkler supply store have a lot of questions that come in from let's say not from contractors but from end users commercial or residential where the valve box lid is either broken

[00:19:06] or all of a sudden the valve box lid is gone they need a replacement valve box lid but they often don't know what kind of valve box they have and as you guys know the valve box lids are particular to the box and it can be very hard

[00:19:21] to help somebody identify what type of valve box they have so the NDS Sure-Fit Universal Lid is a universal lid that can fit a wide range of valve boxes that are round so it's meant for those 10 inch econoboxes I believe, a universal round lid

[00:19:39] and that might be something worth just keeping in your truck if you're a contractor so that you can have a replacement lid that fits lots of different boxes or if you're a distributor listening to this you might keep some universal lids around so that if you

[00:19:55] receive the same question you've got a quick go-to solution and it shouldn't really matter what kind of box they have if we use the new NDS Sure-Fit Lid next up was, and I don't know how new this is

[00:20:07] because I have seen it before but it's the Hydro Rain PVC lock fittings which I'm going to use a competitive term which is like a shark bite fitting but it's for PVC so that it's a non-glue joint you can quickly put pipe into tees, elbows,

[00:20:27] couplers and even manifold pieces you can quickly bind a manifold together without using any glue so take a look at the Hydro Rain PVC lock fittings then I saw something really fascinating actually and it's from Toro which I like because

[00:20:43] if you work at Toro and you're listening to this don't take this the wrong way but oftentimes it seems Toro doesn't always have the latest most inspiring tech but I love this product it really caught my attention I can't wait to learn more

[00:20:57] about it mostly it's in the agriculture space but it's called the Torotranspira or Transpira, let's go with transpira probably for transpiration and what it is is you drill a little hole in a tree and you stick this probe into the tree

[00:21:17] and then you strap the transmitter to the tree and it leverages direct plant sensing I think is how they call it direct plant sensing technology to measure the plant water consumption directly in the plant, directly in the trees instead of measuring the plant water consumption

[00:21:37] in the soil or calculating it through the air using evapotranspiration they put this probe in the tree and it can measure the plant water consumption and I think it's actually kind of just measuring that you know the water uptake in the tree

[00:21:55] and then they can send it up to a dashboard and I believe if I remember correctly the gal said, I don't think I have her card that it converts it to inches so we're all used to watering with inches and I believe the Torotranspira

[00:22:12] provides that in inches, just like inches of ET so that you know what you need to reapply to replenish the water that was consumed but they're measuring it in the plant so I thought that was really cool let's see then there was

[00:22:29] I think the last thing on my new product contest list that caught my attention was the new Tempo 521E so the 521 locator has kind of become the default locator outside of the stuff that Armada has but of course 521 predates Armada so the 521 is kind of used like Kleenex

[00:22:54] it's almost like every locator people call it sometimes the 521 the current model I think is called the 521A this is their brand new locator the 521E I downloaded a clip a sound bite off of their one minute YouTube ad

[00:23:13] that I will play for you in just a moment just to kind of change it up here on today's podcast and add some variation for you the 521E Tempo says can quickly and accurately locate buried wires, irrigation valve, faults and buried cable

[00:23:31] and it can find nicks and it can locate solenoid valves and then what I thought was really interesting is I don't believe the 521A does this it can accurately determine the depth of the wire they've got some new 45 degree angle indicator

[00:23:46] so they can actually determine the depth of the wire which is pretty cool so it seems like it has a couple more feature sets built into the new locator I can tell you that the form factor

[00:23:58] the way the plastic is molding it just has this new modern feel the screen is color you can see an indicator move of course it still puts out the sound you can put headphones on it operates like a locator that we're used to seeing

[00:24:12] and I think I'll go ahead and play the sound bite for you right now say is that a Tempo 521A? that is a phenomenal wire and valve locator but you know what's even more phenomenal? Tempo's new and improved 521E wire and valve locator

[00:24:29] the receiver now has a carbon fiber reinforced antenna making it amazingly light but strong enough to withstand the rigors of even your job wow oh we're just getting started those wizards at Tempo took feedback from hundreds of irrigation texts like you

[00:24:43] so they ruggedized that transmitter and made it removable and now they both have LCD screens that can be read in direct sunlight oh and the screen even has a 45 degree angle and low battery indicator so you'll know exactly how much juice you have

[00:24:59] and if you're pointing that thing in the right direction to triangulate why your depth have I forgotten anything still find buried wires, valves and faults? yep any relearning required? nope beautiful I love it me too alright so that wraps up the new product

[00:25:17] the things I saw at the new product contest and I'll just repeat them for you again really quickly we had the baseline wireless substation RV wireless substation CP NDS sure-fit universal lid HydroRain PVC lock fittings the Toro Transpira and then the Tempo 521E

[00:25:38] those are my quick takeaways from the new product contest and then just to wrap it up I really was impressed this year with the what is now called the HydroPoint Brew Crew Party which was coined by baseline I think we coined that about a decade ago now

[00:25:54] baseline brew crew parties where we would get a bunch of people together at the IA show and at the ASIC conferences and then bring in some other smaller manufacturers so that together we could fund a really awesome event and I was not part of this year's scheduling

[00:26:13] and everything but Janine Jackson just really put together a fantastic party and the icing on the cake for me was I had somebody hand rolling cigars with a custom brew crew label so that was fantastic and we did a riverboat cruise for about 45 minutes

[00:26:34] all up and down the river walk here in San Diego and this may be my fifth time I'm sorry I said San Diego, San Antonio this is probably my fifth time to San Antonio and although I've spent time on the river walk

[00:26:46] generally it's just sort of outside my hotel plus or minus a block or so this time on the riverboat I was able to see the entire San Antonio river walk and it blew my mind honestly it sounds strange

[00:27:00] but I can't wait to take my wife on a weekend you know quick weekend vacation down to San Antonio because I have kind of a whole new perspective because the scale of the river walk is a lot bigger than I thought it was

[00:27:12] so thank you HydroPoint for throwing an incredible brew crew party probably the best one yet yeah so that wraps it up guys I really look forward to updating you on the Vision AI sensor technology that Paul and I are working on

[00:27:33] and I think just as a wrap-up on that what's interesting about reading water meters remotely is that there are lots and lots of different types of water meters so there are some remote readers that you can clamp onto a water meter and it will read the meter head

[00:27:54] generally using something called a hall sensor report the data back or you could connect to an extra set of wires that are coming off the meter or you could replace the meter head with a new wireless meter head but to make a long story short

[00:28:08] there are lots and lots of different types of meters and so what we're finding is that one type of remote meter reader doesn't work for all meters so you really kind of need a tool bag of lots of options and I think that this Vision AI sensor

[00:28:27] will be a great solution because regardless of the meter this would always work because it is just very similar to the human looking at the meter and writing down what the meter says but we can get that remotely on an interval that can be set by us

[00:28:45] we could tell it to read the meter once a minute and tell us what it is or read the meter once a day and tell us what it is and the difference between those intervals will determine the battery life depending on what you're looking for

[00:28:58] if you're trying to find a leak you probably want a shorter interval you probably want to read it every five minutes if you're trying to really find a leak but you definitely want to read it more than once a day if you're trying to find a leak

[00:29:15] but just for validation and for recording total consumption perhaps one a day is fine so I just think this is going to be a really good tool to add to the tool bag of possible ways to read a water meter remotely and keep that in mind

[00:29:31] if you have a client that wants to read a meter remotely because it's only now transmitting to the city give me a shout I can definitely help you put together a solution to remotely read water meters of any shape and size and we can do it very affordably

[00:29:47] and put together a water balance for your clients and with that we'll talk about water balance more in the future that's an area that Paul Bassett has a lot of experience in so I'll bring Paul back on the show perhaps we can talk about water balance

[00:30:00] that's it guys thank you so much for listening appreciate seeing many of you here at the IA show and that's it have a great weekend and we'll see you next week same time, same place on The Spring Glittered Show bye bye alright let's hear it