#181 - Ohio Goes Wireless

[00:00:20] Welcome back to The Sprinkler Nerd Show. I'm your host, Andy Humphrey. This is episode highway. Highway. Highway, byway, my way, your way, the way, what way, what way, what way on the highway. Trying to make a little rhythm here, a little rhythm, catch the rhythm.

[00:00:40] So I'm actually driving from in between Cincinnati and Louisville, and I thought I would just take a couple minutes here and record my thoughts. From some digital notes I took flying down to Cincinnati this week. I came down to Cincinnati on Tuesday to spend time with my good buddy, Steve Young.

[00:01:04] Mr. Steve Young, one of the leaders in the Ohio irrigation markets, works for Jerry Pate, previously Century Equipment. And we spent the week introducing wireless technology to the market from the Hexi soil moisture sensor. That was kind of the lead magnet, followed by wireless pressure sensing, wireless flow sensing.

[00:01:29] And met with lots of professional institutions from universities to soccer clubs to some of the most predominant irrigation contractors in the state. So, Steve, I know you don't listen to podcasts, but I appreciate you. Thank you for a fantastic week on the road introducing new technology to the market.

[00:01:54] And I wanted to share a couple thoughts I had on the airplane coming down on Tuesday about soil moisture sensing and about the data. So I don't think this episode is going to be very long, but I had a few thoughts in my mind and an analogy and a way of thinking about soil moisture. And again, this is just through my lens, one way to look at it, one way to help introduce the concept to you.

[00:02:19] And this came to me because typically or often people look at soil moisture and they look at the number and then they want to know what it means. What does 21.6% mean? And if somebody asks me that or they ask you that, I can't tell them. And that sounds strange, right?

[00:02:47] Sounds strange that I can't tell them exactly what 26% means. And part of the reason I think that that is interesting is that as it relates to temperature, air temperature, we all know what a specific air temperature means. We know what 70 degrees is. We know what that number is all by that number itself.

[00:03:14] However, with soil moisture, you need more information. You need two pieces of data to have a better understanding of what the one data point means. For instance, 21% could mean very wet or it could mean very dry. It depends. It depends on the soil type.

[00:03:42] So if I asked a follow up question and I said, tell me your soil type. And if they knew what their soil type was, which most people do not, most people can get close kind of, but they don't know exactly. And there's also other factors that can affect a soil's holding capacity beyond the soil itself.

[00:04:03] For instance, a very compacted loam soil might behave more like a clay soil because it's not just about the soil type, but it's about the compaction. It's about the structure. All of those things also influence the holding capacity and therefore the number. And so as it relates to soil moisture sensing, you need more information.

[00:04:33] So I find that oftentimes instead of looking at soil moisture sensor by just considering the one value, you need to know the value over time. So in my mind, the way I like to utilize sensors and educate on sensors is to use it as a monitor and look at the values over time.

[00:05:00] So what does it look like when you water the landscape, water, the turf grass? What does it look like two days after you water the landscape? What does it look like after a rain event? Only after you drive the numbers up and you watch the numbers go down, do you start to understand the characteristics of your soil?

[00:05:26] So what I wanted to introduce today, introduce to the world, introduce to you, those of you listening, is this concept of looking at your soil and thinking of it as having a rhythm. I haven't put a lot of thought into this, so I don't want to overthink it. But if we if we look at soil moisture over time, it is going to preferably go up and is going to go down.

[00:05:52] It is either going to go up very quickly and go down very quickly or might go up very slowly and go down very slowly or might go up very quickly and down very quickly. There is a rhythm of the soil. There's a rhythm of the moisture that is influenced by precipitation, either from the sprinkler or from the atmosphere from rain.

[00:06:23] And that would be. The rate at which it goes up. And then you have and the rhythm of the down is influenced by what? The weather. Right. The hotter it is, the windier it is. Means the drier it is means the faster the soil is going to dry out. Per se. And the cooler it is and more humid it is, et cetera. It means it's going to dry out slower. So you get into this into this rhythm.

[00:06:50] And so I think that the concept of thinking about soil moisture as a rhythm. Can provide a visual and a rhythm is becomes a pattern. A rhythm is almost like looking at data over time.

[00:07:07] And so what I'd like to what I'd like to introduce or put out there or propose is to think of your your crop, your landscape, your turf grass, your professional field, your golf course, whatever it might be to think of your crop as as having a rhythm. And the more data that you start to collect, the more you are able to see the rhythm.

[00:07:31] And if you can see the rhythm, you can decide if it's the rhythm that you like or if you would like to change the rhythm. How can you influence the rhythm? Should you water more often? Should you water less frequently? Should you water water longer? Should you reduce your run times? Because those things affect the rhythm.

[00:07:53] And so I feel like thinking of soil as having a rhythm immediately changes the narrative from thinking of soil moisture as one data point in time to looking at lots of data points over a period of time. And that, therefore, introduces this concept of monitoring. If you want to see the rhythm, you have to start monitoring your your conditions.

[00:08:21] Once you monitor your conditions, you can start to see the rhythm and you can start to make decisions about how you may or may not want to change that rhythm. So here's a here's a couple of questions that I think might drive some some thought or I guess I would like it to influence thoughts in your head.

[00:08:44] So if I were to ask you a question that I've already seated this a bit, I suppose, if I were to ask you a question, the question is this. What is the rhythm? What is the rhythm? What is the rhythm? What does that mean to you? So if I ask you what is the rhythm? What does that mean to you? Or if you asked your client, what would they say?

[00:09:13] Now, what if I asked you, what is the rhythm of the weather? What does that mean to you? Now, if I asked you, what is the rhythm of your irrigation system? What does that mean to you? Now, if I ask you, what is the rhythm of the sound? What does that mean to you?

[00:09:41] I think we can visualize the rhythm of the sound, right? There's a pattern. There's a beat. There's a pace. And perhaps there should be a rhythm and a beat and a pace of our irrigation systems, of our landscapes, of our crops.

[00:10:01] And perhaps the job of the irrigation system is to replace the rainfall to keep the rhythm in motion. Maybe that's the goal, is to water on a rhythm and keep the rhythm in rhythm. Okay.

[00:10:29] Sorry, I'm being a kind of a geek and a nerd here. So, let's see. Where was I? Now, if I ask you, what is the pattern? What does that mean? That's a little bit easier to comprehend. Looking for patterns. What is the pattern? But isn't a rhythm very much like a pattern?

[00:10:56] Something that's rhythmical has a repeatable pattern. So, maybe we should be thinking about watering applications like understanding the pattern, learning the pattern. Okay. And is a pattern one single data point? How do you identify a pattern? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:23] You have to, you have to gather multiple data points in order to identify a pattern. So, it is my belief that one of the largest benefits of using sensor technology, different types of sensors, soil moisture sensors, that's what we're talking about here. But the same thing can be said for pressure sensing, flow sensing, etc.

[00:11:50] One of the biggest benefits or potential benefits of using sensor technology for optimizing your landscape is not one single data point. It's not what does 33% mean. It's looking at many data points over time to understand the pattern, to understand the rhythm.

[00:12:12] It is when you start to uncover the pattern and see the rhythm that you begin to see the full picture. So, that's it. That's my thought. That was my, it's not an aha, but that was my little moment of visualization that I thought you might be able to relate to. And maybe if you think about it and you come up with something, let me know. But yeah, pattern recognition, looking for the rhythm.

[00:12:42] And so, with the opportunity now to deploy more sensor data and collect it and look at the analytics, we are able to identify the patterns in the rhythms. And once we identify them, we can see if that's the rhythm in the pattern that we want. And we can change the rhythm in the pattern. We can change the beat. We can go from watering 30 minutes to watering 25 minutes. We can go from watering three days a week to two days a week. Right?

[00:13:09] We can do these things because we can collect the data to visualize and uncover the rhythms and the pattern. So, that's it. That's what I have. Thank you for listening. Thank you for joining me each week on the podcast. I appreciate all of you new listeners as well. Thank you for going back in the archives and uncovering things that I have not listened to in a while. Really, really means a lot to me. If you have ideas for new guests, new topics, would love to hear it.

[00:13:39] And yeah, thank you so much. And again, I'm going to start saying this probably each episode. If you are interested in joining my future group of technology leaders, visit harmonyanalytica.com forward slash future.

[00:14:00] Where I'm gathering what hopefully will be the future leaders of the technology and business side of irrigation and landscape. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode. Happy sprinkling. Yes, I heard the news. It's a simple news game. So, don't you laugh.