00:00 We're standing by a 60 foot grain bin on my operation. It holds just a shade over a hundred thousand bushel, one clear, full, uh, 00:07 our operation is growing like many others across the Midwest. Our grain storage is growing 00:12 and the problem is becoming, keeping the grain in condition, knowing what the moisture is. 00:16 You know, back in the eighties and the nineties when I graduated high school, we had hogs. Uh, you didn't have to worry about the grain so much 00:23 'cause it was a much smaller grain tank. We could grind a load or two out of there for the hogs. We would know the grain is in condition. Mm-Hmm. 00:28 Now with a hundred thousand bushel bin or 150,000 bushel bin or even larger, how do we know the grain is in condition? 00:34 And there's two different sets of expenses that I worry about. Number one, worst case scenario, 00:39 the grain goes outta condition. Mm-Hmm. And all of a sudden we've got some extra cattle feed. 00:42 Yep. Number two, because we don't want it to go outta condition, the other expense, and it's a bit hidden. 00:48 We run that fan more than we need to. There's an added electric expense. Mm-Hmm. And then we dry that corn down below 15. The corn shrinks. 00:55 That's an added expense that isn't something every farmer thinks about because it's not evident on your check. 01:00 But it is a real expense. We're putting in the op blue system here because we're taking the unknown out of the equation. 01:07 Information is power. It's also, uh, a huge added bonus, the safety factor. Mm-Hmm. When, when 01:15 that grain goes outta condition, it bridges up. You've gotta enter that tank. The the grain is standing up on you. Bridging up. 01:20 Like I said, it can be a very unsafe environment. Accidents happen every year and the larger the tanks go, the more the accidents happen. 01:27 Alright. So standing here, uh, we're here next to our, uh, um, fan node control box. 01:33 And as you can see, there is a, uh, piece of hardware there in the middle with a whole pile of wires tied into it. 01:39 Uh, some of the two of the wires are for power and the rest of it is all connected to sensors. So, uh, this top sensor up here 01:46 to the left is tied into the weather station that's right behind you. That tells you the external temperature 01:51 and external relative humidity. Then the next set of wires is a plenum sensor that is in the floor of the transition. 01:58 And, uh, that tells you the temperature and relative humidity under the bin as well as CO2 CO2 is key because that sense is anything 02:07 before the cables will see it. Okay. And we've had that, that's what I was wondering what the CO2 is. 02:12 Yes. That's like a precursor to a Problem. Yes. Okay. Yes. 'cause that's gonna tell you if you got bugs 02:16 or mold or anything else happen, it, it might take because the sensors are four feet apart, it'll just catch it a little bit quicker. 02:23 Yes. Can you tell us exactly how do the cables work inside the bin? Yeah. So, uh, the eve of this bin is less than a hundred foot. 02:29 So we hang these, uh, from the outside that, um, one makes install easier and we can, uh, install when there's, um, corn 02:37 or beans in the bin. Um, we just drop the cable through, we tie it to the door. When you empty it, we drop it down 02:42 and we tie 'em to the floor. That way they don't flail out when you're filling it. So every cable is gonna look really similar to this. 02:49 Um, they're, you know, whether they're a hundred foot long or 125 feet long, there's a, um, strand of cable 02:54 that loops in through here. And then we drop an insert in through the middle of it that has a, a sensing element every four feet. 03:00 So, if I remember right, this bin's about 60 feet tall. So there's 15 sensors between the floor and the roof. And this cable is designed when we measure that up, 03:10 it's measured to be, the bottom of it is about waste high. You have a power sweep in there. 03:13 We don't want these getting caught in the power sweep. And then this communicates with a solar powered node that's on top of the bin. 03:19 Um, and then that communicates with the office. And then, uh, what they see then comes back from that, um, uh, piece of hardware in the office. 03:28 And then this does all the things based on how we set the settings in the, He and you and I are obviously older than 33. 03:34 And you were talking before we got on camera. You know, when you would check bins, if it would sink up to your knees, the grain's good. 03:40 And I, you know, that made me chuckle when you say that. I remember going around with my dad 15 years old way 03:45 before Kyle was born at 33. And, uh, uh, you go and you, you'd go check the bin, you'd climb up. He said, well, how was it? I said, well, 03:52 I sunk into my knees. You know, this is a 10,000 bushel bin, probably a 27 foot diameter. 03:57 He said, well that corn's fine then you didn't worry about it anymore. Mm-Hmm. A 60 foot tank 04:00 or 110 foot tank like we've got here, sinking into your knees doesn't tell you much. Nope. 40 foot down. That's what makes this system. 04:07 Uh, we need this information. That's what makes this system necessary. There's a definite ROI here when we keep the grain 04:13 and condition and we don't dry it too much. Ian, can you talk to us a little bit about what the cost of this system is and what about the, what about if I want 04:21 to add this bin over here behind us, what is that gonna entail? So for the bin that we're talking about here, 04:25 said it's about a hundred thousand bushels. We're looking at that 15 to $20,000 range. And in that we're gonna put a combination of cables 04:33 to read both temperature and moisture. And then some cables are gonna read temperature. Like Kyle said, we're gonna put a sensor in the head space 04:39 and in the plenum that's gonna read temperature, moisture, CO2 and weather station. 04:43 We're also gonna put a gateway on site that's gonna communicate all the information back to the cloud. 04:49 It also means the first bin's gonna be the most expensive. 'cause we don't need a gateway on every one of our bins. 04:54 So if you were to add it to the second bin of an equivalent size, it's gonna be about 2,500, $3,000 less cost. 05:01 Because we're not gonna use the, we're not gonna put in a second gateway on the, We've already got the control system in the 05:07 office and we can keep going. It's Already right there. Okay. So a hundred thousand bushel bin, uh, 17,500 05:13 to do it halfway between 15 and 20. Yep. That's 17 cents a bushel. Yes. Yep. And that's year one. Yes. That's year one. 05:20 Uh, this is gonna pay off rather quickly. So When we've looked at this year over year, uh, and done several case studies, our goal is 05:28 to have this thing be net black in less than three years. And that can be from a combination of things, like you said, 05:34 preventing grain from going bad on the top of the bin. Mm-Hmm. Or preventing, uh, uh, excessive fan runtime and over dry on the bottom. 05:40 Mm-Hmm. But our goal is to have you in the black in less than three years by automating your fan control. 05:46 Uh, I could see that that's a very reasonable statement. You know, a lot of times it's advertised the 05:50 payback is faster than it is. I think three years is incredibly reasonable here based on the, the inexpensiveness of it and what we've done. 05:58 I've had trouble with grain going outta condition in here before. You know, the, we've got the wet bin. 06:02 Grain goes into the dryer, then the dryer dumps in here. That grain, if you're pushing it hard, 06:07 if you're pushing it hard, that grain probably comes in here hotter than it should. And that's what leads to the problems. 06:12 A system like this is gonna keep that fan running and, and again, take that unknown outta the equation. I'm excited to use it. 06:18 I bet we use this the first year or two and then we're talking about the next bin.