September 26, 2024 • 55 mins
Nikki & Ali, sit down with Vinny Endres, owner of Bitmasked Automation & a trailblazer in dairy farm automation. Vinny shares his journey from growing up on a dairy farm to becoming a diesel mechanic, then discovering his passion for electrical engineering & automation.
He shares his unique perspective integrating robotic technologies in dairy farming, the potential of teleoperation, the promise of autonomous milling systems, & reconfiguring traditional farming processes to be more automation-friendly.
Huge thank you to Inductive Automation for sponsoring this episode!
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Co-Hosts are Alicia Gilpin Director of Engineering at Process and Controls Engineering LLC, Nikki Gonzales Director of Business Development at Weintek USA, and Courtney Fernandez Robot Master at FAST One Solutions.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to another episode of Automation Ladies.
This one is pre-recorded in myoffice here in Houston with
Allie on site.
Hey, allie, hi.
So we've been hanging out forthe last few days here.
We've done a couple ofrecordings this week and so
we're not entirely sure whenthis is going to air possibly
sometime after our stint at theassembly show next week and
(00:25):
automate, but we have, yeah,busy conference season coming up
, so we wanted to try to get afew episodes recorded here with
people that we've been waitingto talk to for a long time, one
of them being our guest today,vinny Andrus, who we most
recently saw in person in Dallasat TraceRouteCon, the infamous
training class for networkingindustrial networking run by our
(00:48):
friend Josh Varghese atTraceroute, and that is part of
what inspired our upcomingconference.
That part of why Ali is inHouston is that we were just
touring the Phoenix ContactCustomer Experience.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Center, technology Center.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah, customer technology center.
I'll get the terminologycorrect to make sure that we you
know to finalize hosting ourevent there.
So our event is called OTSkate-a-Con.
You probably have heard aboutit by now If you haven't go
check it out automationladiesioslash OTSkate-a-Con, and Vinny
is going to be one of ourspeakers there as well.
(01:25):
So we are super excited to getyou to you know, get to know him
a little bit and hear hisbackstory, and one of the things
that we bonded over eatingbarbecue, uh, in dallas, was the
fact that he works with a lotof dairies and dairy farms and
has a background in that and andAllie and I actually more of a
family history than directexperience, but my grandfather
(01:48):
worked at a dairy plant hiswhole career making butter.
Allie's grandfather also madebutter, so we have a dairy
lineage, so to speak, and so wegot super excited to talk about
dairy and all kinds of farm andfarm automation with Vinny.
So, vinny, thank you so muchfor coming on to our show.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Absolutely Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
You're welcome.
You're one of the well, not oneof the few people.
It's getting more common thesedays when we say, hey, come on
the show, and you were like,yeah, sure, okay, Made it easy.
Can you tell us for ouraudience?
Just give us a little.
I guess our first question isgenerally can you tell us the
backstory of how the heck yougot into automation?
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah, so I grew up on a dairy farm, as you mentioned,
and actually kind of had alittle stint where I wanted to
be an engineer.
In middle school that took allthe advanced math and then hit
high school and lost thatmotivation and decided to be a
diesel mechanic and ended upgoing to school for crop and
soil science actually so bigtwist of events there and then
(02:50):
came back to the farm to work asa diesel mechanic, did not use
crop and soil science at all andas a mechanic actually disliked
electronics entirely.
I would avoid them and if itneeded it I would just send it
in.
But eventually I read this book.
I wish I could remember thename and if it needed it I would
just send it in.
But eventually I read this book.
I wish I could remember thename.
I think it was ESI something,but it was a guy who wrote this
(03:11):
book on graph paper explainingelectricity.
It was the first one that wasdumbed down enough I actually
understood it.
And then I learned how a relayworks and thought I was smart.
So fast forward a few more years.
We're putting in a new parlorat the farm and an electrician
walks by this alarm interfacebox and it's full of relays, he
goes why didn't they just put aPLC in here?
(03:33):
What's a PLC?
So I look it up and this thinglooks pretty neat.
Tried my hand at some otherprogramming in the past.
I always liked thinking withcomputer games but never really
stuck it out, and so this is anice low barrier to entry.
I could get dinking withcomputer games but never really
stuck it out, and so this is anice low barrier to entry.
I could get along with this.
It's visual and got a PLC,taught myself how to do it,
replaced a few things around thefarm.
(03:55):
Had a close friend in the agcommunity from the East Coast
contact me about making his icemachine for his vegetables run
from his phone and thought, wow,people will pay you to do this.
So got very kind of reallyinterested in that and decided
that I wanted to explore that alittle more and see where things
(04:17):
went.
So decided electricalengineering is probably a good
path to go back to school forand it's a terrible choice when
you're older it's very hard todo, but especially electrical
engineering.
But did it anyways and it wasvery interesting.
Did a nice flexible transferprogram they had and had worked
(04:38):
for an integrator for a littlebit, had to leave that to finish
the schooling and had big plansto stay work for a few more
years with other people,hopefully with this goal of
coming back and doing my ownthing.
At some point.
The problem kind of came upthat just had so many people
asking for things in the agcommunity.
Primarily that it was you kindof had to make a choice and so
(05:01):
while I left without the bestknowledge of you know what you
would consider an experiencedperson in the integration world,
I did understand the process wewere trying to automate.
So I kind of went there andit's most of this world is
what's your Rolodex for anoutdated term, I guess
(05:22):
networking and just networking.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
I just said that on your last podcast I used that
term too.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
The Rolodex.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
I don't mean the actual physical Rolodex, I mean
your network.
She has one and I do have anactual physical one.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Yeah, and I have a stack of business cards.
It really is.
And my parents, my whole family, has kind of been big on
networking.
From when we were younger.
My parents kind of instilledthat in us, drug us to all the
different organizations throughdairy farming.
We had Jersey cows, so we werereally active in that and saw
the power of having a nationwidenetwork of people with similar
(06:01):
ideas and similar industries.
And so I kind of developed myown in the ag world through the
years, talking smart on theinternet, things like that, and
really that all kind of cameback.
You know that you had all thesepeople knew who you were, saw
what you were doing and juststarted asking if you could do
stuff.
So that it really grew fromthere.
(06:22):
And and uh, started bitmas, uhthree years ago now, um,
actually like three years andfour days ago officially and and
it's uh really kind of justtaken off primarily through the
word of mouth um, in the freshproduce and dairy and then grain
(06:44):
as well.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Okay, so that's Bitmasked Automation.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Yeah, yeah, correct.
So I didn't like EndressAutomation because spelling my
last name is very hard.
You have to do it phoneticallyover the phone.
So I wanted to be cute and usesomething from computers that
none of your customers wouldunderstand.
So I used BitMask and then, thefirst time I spelt it over the
phone, realized my mistake.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Allie and I were actually just talking about it
earlier.
She was encouraged not to puther own name on her company even
though we so a friend of oursthat David Turner.
He just changed his companyname to Turner process.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Turner process automation.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Turner process automation maybe.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
I think so.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
I think process systems.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
That may be correct.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
But it has the word Turner in it, and now I'll
remember that because his oldcompany name, which was a much
more descriptive, it was justhard for me to keep track of it
it was process and automationspecialists, I think.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
I was like I know it's process and specialists,
but yeah, there's pros and consto I guess those.
I grew up with the last name,haskrimstotir, and so putting my
name on anything would probablybe just like instant suicide.
Yeah, I feel your pain there.
I love the company name, by theway.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Why did you?
I mean, what does it mean toyou outside of?
Like it was cute, like do youhave like some kind of I don't
know what it means to you?
Speaker 3 (08:21):
No, no, there's nothing cool.
I need to come up with a fakeone someday, though, for, uh, if
I ever have to give a fancypresentation, uh, but.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
I bet you could come up with some yeah probably it,
it really was.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
I was sitting in in in school still at the time when
I started it, and just lookingat all the things around us and
I was like, well, I don't know,I mean it's something a little
generic.
It came up.
One was like two end solutions,you know cause binary is two to
the end.
Maybe that would have been abetter idea.
But then, yeah, the bit maskcame up, and then there's a
(08:57):
little debate about properEnglish and if it should be bit
mask or bit masked, which justplain bit mask would have been
way easier to spell.
But it is what it is.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Well, now we've discussed it enough that really
anybody that wants to rememberit probably can.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Yeah, don't forget the E-D.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
And I'm assuming your website would be what
Bitmaskautomationcom.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
It's actually just Bitmaskcom.
Keep it even simpler.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Oh okay, Nobody had that yeah yeah, that that's that
also nowadays can play a bigfactor in what company name you
choose yes you got to go see ifthe domain is available and then
you're like, oh, am I going togo fornet or io, or do I have to
change the name or buy outwhoever ownscom?
Somebody actually reached outto us recently offering to sell
(09:44):
us the domainautomationladiescom.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
For like several hundred or maybe several
thousand dollars, I don'tremember, but we're good.
We were like nah, we're fine.
So you and then also, like Iguess your company name does not
constrain you to farm orproduce or any of the particular
applications that you work onno, it doesn't, and that was
part of the goal.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
At first.
I had no idea where any of thiswas going to go.
I actually didn't even it'sactually it didn't even get
registered as bitmast automation.
I added that in later so peoplewould know that that's what
we're doing, because at the timeis doing a bunch of 3d printers
, doing a bunch of a whole bunchof things, and and it wasn't
really until um you know, uh,the last year, especially where
(10:32):
really just honed in on the eggstuff you know, went through
some read, some books, wentthrough some leadership things
and a lot of them these daystalk about find what you're kind
of good at and just stick tothat.
You know, every time you branchout, you're spending a lot of
time and resources trying tolearn something new, which is
fine to an extent, but that hasa cost to it.
(10:54):
So if you can find an area thatyou're good at, stick to it,
and there's plenty of people inthe industrial space that are
doing a great job, space thatare doing a great job.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
If someone asked me to do something, I would
consider it but we're notactively looking to get into
those markets if they're notclosely related to HAG.
Yeah Well, that's a greatposition to be in, to have the
network and to be well-known forwhat you can do and for people
to have that trust that theywant to call somebody that they
know or that they know of,versus you know, versus trying
(11:27):
to maybe find somebody that hasthe top of the line, best
experience, most fancyeverything, but you know they,
they're unknown to you.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
And I think we'll do they discount how much that
emotional factor plays intobusiness decisions.
Sometimes, just knowing thatyou can call somebody and that
they're not going to BS you overthe phone or whatever like
that's that's a huge value inbusiness versus just yeah, you
may or may not like be the mostexperienced company that's been
around for the longest doingthis, um, uh, at least for me
(11:58):
and I see that with my dad toouh, most of his projects have
come from people that know him.
My job came from somebody thatknows me.
If I had sent out my resume toquote beam to become employee
number one and they didn't knowme, they'd be like I don't think
it would have even made it toanybody's desk.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
One thing that you said, though, about your parents
, and that's really cool.
I you know, and I'm going totake this lesson and try to
teach my kids that you knownetworking early, when you just
to get to know and make surethat you are plugged into those
communities later on, when youhave something to offer.
You know those people, know youRight, and I don't think that
(12:35):
you can ever start too earlywith those sorts of things.
If there's a way, right, I'mnot going to like start shoving
my kids to trade shows and likemake them hand out business
cards.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Yeah, I mean, and a lot of mine was, you know, the
stuff with my parents was alittle going to conventions and
all that and the events morein-person networking, Most of my
acquaintances.
To this day I still don't evenhaven't met half of them in
person and even this firstcustomer of mine he had never
(13:05):
met me.
I didn't even know his real name, because this goes back to
forums where you didn't use yourreal name back in the day and
most of that networking with allthose people really was I kind
of.
I've always I like to learn,which most of us engineers types
like to, and so people wouldpost a question and I would not
(13:28):
know the answer, but I'd be like, well, we could figure out what
a likely answer would be to itand actually do a lot of
research and try to figure outthat answer, because now you
have that knowledge, because ifsomeone doesn't ask the question
and if you get a thousandpeople on the internet asking
questions, that's a lot morepool of knowledge to draw from
and so things that interested meand answer them and I guess
(13:50):
that just kind of created a lotof connections with a lot of
people that eventually evolved,you know, through emails or
Facebook or whatever it wasstarted to learn the real faces
behind some of them and connectwith a nice small group of them.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
So what forums specifically have you been
frequenting or use?
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Well, so back in the day, a lot of the ag ones came
from one called New Ag Talk.
Actually it was one of theoriginal ag forums from the 90s.
It wasn't called that initially, but I got on it kind of late.
My forums experiences startedwhen I was younger, as a
mechanic working on the farm.
I worked on people's Duramaaxdiesel pickups on the side and
(14:34):
so I was in all of thosedifferent forms.
That was kind of my firstexposure, and so when these
companies keep updating theirforums the past five, ten years
and they move away from the vbulletin format, I'm still kind
of stuck in my ways.
Uh, but that that was where theexperience.
What's that?
Speaker 1 (14:51):
yeah, it doesn't be.
Forums are their own experienceand I don't.
In my opinion, they don't needto be messed with, like just if
it's an active forum and peopleare on there and they are still
exchanging ideas and whatever,like leave it alone.
I don't.
I don't know, maybe just me.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Yeah, I think the last one I remember being you
know, because naturally we alllook at PLCsnet and that was the
last one in kind of the trueVBulletin format and I know it
changed.
I don't know if it's still apart of VBulletin, but I know it
just updated the last couple ofmonths.
So that was the last shred ofyouth, I guess, gone.
But these days I don't spendmuch time on a lot of the, the
(15:31):
ag related ones as much.
I stay more in using the, thesame philosophy kind of on some
of the forums that are specificfor the hardware use, or you
know, the two generic.
There are the three genericplaces we all go to for PLC
stuff PLC'snet, reddit andLinkedIn, and just try to stay
(15:54):
up on everything as much as Ican.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, so that's a great tip to any of our
listeners.
If you are interested inbranching out into areas that
you don't have much of a networkor you need more knowledge,
those are some great forums tohit up.
I don't know about Mr PLC.
Did you ever frequent that hitup?
Uh, I don't know about mr plc.
Did you ever frequent thatforum?
Speaker 3 (16:13):
I myself didn't know that one, and there was like a
control forum that night orsomething too.
I've never I've come across alot of them, but I I'm a late
bloomer really in the plc world.
I've only been in it for uhwell, realistically like five
years.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
So yeah, okay, well, now you have some tips as to
where the discussions arehappening, at least for people
that have kind of come into itin the last five years.
And yeah, go answer questions,go add some value and, like
vinny said, you don't often youdon't necessarily have to know
the answer to the question to beable to, you know, be part of
the discussion.
Maybe add a.
(16:49):
Maybe this would help or maybethere's something here.
I found that to work a lot forme just trying to be helpful
even if I don't know an answer.
If nobody's given the greatanswer, just try to point to
some resources or bring otherpeople into the conversation.
It's a great way to kind oforganically network and get
people to pay attention or theysee you around more often.
(17:11):
We were just at last week atthis association for high tech
distribution and I was talkingto another startup founder
yesterday who was going to hisfirst event with their new
company it's a tech crunchconference and I was like, yeah,
at least in my experience,people want to see you around
three to four times before theystart paying attention to your
pitch.
(17:31):
So don't just try to go.
I mean, everybody has if you'rehaving something, if you have
to sell something.
It's hard because you kind ofhave to go try to sell yourself,
but if at all, if you can justparticipate before you have
anything to sell, that can be ahuge win just to get people to
be familiar with you.
Um, and I see, in our industryanyway, it seems to be a big
thing to have some references orbe known in the industry or the
(17:55):
community or something, versusjust like especially people
coming in from outside theindustry that have all the
answers but I don't.
I see generally that they don't, you know, they don't get the
reception that they're lookingfor when they come in like that.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yeah, it's one of it's interesting.
You mentioned the number oftouches you need to, you know,
get someone to be comfortablewith you.
I was reading a book right nowabout prospecting that's
mentions that specific thing andthey do say plan 10 to 20
different touches for someonethat's completely cold to you,
you know that you have noprevious relationship with, and
(18:31):
that can be as simple as theysee you and make a social media
post.
I mean that counts, but it'smore that awareness of it and
where we see a lot of that dropdown to very low numbers or
almost instant sales, is reallythe networking side of it.
I mean, ag is small, like anyother industry, and so it seems
like most of our customers notmore than one or two connections
(18:57):
removed from them, we alwaysknow someone that's the same
person.
It's kind of an automaticreferral that way, if you
weren't directly referred in thefirst place and then, like you
said, a newcomer just coming in,it can be tough without the
background.
Now, granted, I mean at least Igrew up in it, so I kind of have
that crutch to fall back on.
That doesn't mean you have togrow up in an industry to be
(19:20):
good at it.
I didn't grow up with PLCs.
It's debatable if I'm good atthem, but having that experience
really, especially in oursindustry, is useful because
these everyone that we'reworking with is new to PLC.
So, versus going intoestablished manufacturing where
(19:41):
they say you have to use thisbrand PLC, here's our
programming style guide.
You're more you know.
In a way you're almost asubcontractor to that company
themselves, doing the workexactly the way they want it and
they know exactly what theywant, which is can have its
advantages as well.
It's a lot easier to plan for abudget where the stuff we're
(20:01):
doing they may not even haveheard of a PLC.
So we're using hardware thatmakes our development times fast
and then most of the time isspent on understanding their
process and pointing out areaswhere things can be done.
You know, had a recentconversation with someone who
wanted to delay the startup of amotor so that things could warm
(20:22):
up and I said, well, yeah, ifwe tie that in, we can automate
that delay.
He said, yeah, but if it'salready been running it doesn't
need the delay.
And you know it's the thinkingand timers and relays that is a
challenge to add, but in thisenvironment we can add this.
So it's really you can't pusheverything on everyone at once.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
It's really get in, get something working for for
them, let the wheels startturning, then come back and
update a lot of the softwareyeah, and I think a lot of
people you know they're theyneed some small wins to get
comfortable yeah um, and I thinktoo, if you get, if you go too
big on the scope to begin with,there's more potential issues,
(21:06):
especially if the customer is isinexperienced, then they may
not know what to ask, or, youknow, there there can be gaps in
communication, um, and there'sa lot, you know, more potential
for failure on a big project,and then a lot of people get
turned off from automationaltogether they will you really
only have one shot, or what wasthat, ellie?
Speaker 3 (21:26):
if they get burned at all, they're just like I'm good
exactly, yeah, you, you reallyonly have one shot, especially,
uh, you know, ag, it's usuallythe guy signing the check, or
girl signing the check is theone that is operating this stuff
.
So there, if it doesn't workhalf the time, they won't even
tell you, they just won't callyou again.
And and they'll you know,naturally, if someone else asks
(21:49):
them about it, they're going totell them their experience with
it.
So it's kind of staying incontact with them of you know,
cause mistakes get made, thingsget misinterpreted.
It's like, how can we improvethis to make it work?
Uh, fortunately we haven'treally had too many issues with
that.
We try to stay pretty closecontact, uh, with all the
customers and we keep we usuallyhave remote access to always
(22:11):
keep anything working.
But, yeah, it's it really getin.
Just get them comfortable witha little lately.
You know, I guess a good exampleof finding a way in the door
has been level monitoring for us, for whatever reason everybody
likes.
Nobody likes to climb a grainbin to know what's in it, for
starters, and manure is veryhard to measure because it's uh,
(22:34):
traditional sensors don't work.
Radar is really the only thingthat works.
So when you can come in andkind of solve a problem that's
really been annoying them.
That's a great way to open thedoor and a simple way for them
to be comfortable because it isreliable.
Um, and then from there you youcan kind of progress, but you
do still need a place to testall your new ideas.
(22:55):
And so finding that customerthat is the tinkerer and does
understand it and is willing totest you, know your new ideas
and knows how to get it runningat midnight when you're not
there, that's a useful avenue tofind as well.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Yeah, do you have many of those?
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Most of them are relatives and they get the
unknown family discount of.
They get to try my new ideas.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Okay, that's a good one.
Yeah, you know, you mentionedkind of before that you know the
small world aspect and yeah, wewere just at a party.
I threw a networking partyyesterday and I bought a book I
don't have it with me, but I sawit from a post from a
connection on LinkedIn who had apicture with them and the guy
(23:45):
that wrote the book.
And then I looked at that guy'sprofile and I was like, oh, he
wrote this book that looksinteresting and I ordered it.
And then, right after chapterone, it had a challenge to you
know, just do it like book yourown party and get it started.
And I did and I invited my dad.
It says like you should mix updifferent groups of people,
right?
So the point is to kind of likerun this structured two-hour
(24:07):
networking party with differentgroups of people that you know,
um, and friends, family, uh,neighbors and then like
professional connections, um andI my dad is both a professional
connection and my neighbor andmy family, I guess, um, but he's
, you know, we're from iceland,he does not network much, he
doesn't get out much, and hehappened to make a connection at
(24:29):
this party yesterday.
So he's from iceland, we'refrom iceland, um, and my dad has
one business that runstemperature monitoring for
grocery stores, uh, coolers,fridges, freezers, pharmacies
and a few other types of things.
But, and this, this woman thatshowed up to the party yesterday
has taken over running herfather's business and they, um,
do what was it?
(24:50):
Allie the?
Speaker 2 (24:51):
air curtains.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
They're like air curtains for refrigeration
systems, like big walk-ins, likewalk-ins in the grocery stores
where you walk into, like theCostco, like refrigerated rooms
and she has a big presence inIceland of all places Like they,
because most of our grocerystores there use those instead
of having, like the you know,two aisles of like frozen foods,
(25:12):
uh, freezers, and, like I, whatare the odds of that?
But that that was their firsttime meeting.
They didn't need the 12, youknow touches because they had
such a freaking niche thing thatthey connected on, so that was
really easy to make thatconnection.
Um, and when you run intosomebody that has a solution to
a very niche problem that youand only a few people care about
(25:35):
, that's one of those, I think,examples that you can skip the
12 touches, because just thatinvolvement in that tiny little
niche is enough to create sometrust or or enough interest to
do some business together.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
That actually connected to a point we made
earlier.
My next question that I thoughtof where you were talking was
like what are some of your mostfavorite or coolest applications
that you've gotten to work onon the farm or elsewhere?
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Well, as I said, my first paid project was an ice
machine and I still have a softspot for those.
They're, you know, these days,are.
It's a relatively simple thing.
We've done them quite a fewtimes, but there's still nothing
more satisfying than, you know,turning starting that thing up
and then seeing ice drop out ofit.
Um, and for some context, Iguess, because for audio, uh,
(26:28):
these are not.
Some of my friends ask me tooyou're working on hotel ice
machines and stuff.
No, these you knowcommercialized plants, for
produce primarily.
So they usually do about 100 to300,000 pounds of ice a day and
you know 150 to 300 horsepowerto run these, just the ammonia
(26:49):
side of them, and so there's alot going on on them to make
them work.
You know the ammoniarefrigeration system, the ice
builder itself and the storageand all the infeed sides of
everything and they need to runlights out.
But those are seeing the icedrop because it is a cyclic
(27:09):
process.
At Tube Ice, every 10 minutesthey drop ice and it's pretty
satisfying to watch.
But the you know some of themore unique ones.
We've been doing some stuffwith ag robotics.
We don't do the robots, but theintegrating of all the systems
around it.
That's fun to be a part ofbecause that is the way ag is
moving.
Fun to be a part of becausethat is the way ag is moving.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
So what are some of the coolest innovations in that
space that you've seen actuallywork out in the field?
What types of robots have youbeen integrating?
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Melking robots are not a new thing by any means.
They've been around for 30years Commercially, actually
almost 30.
But those have really the lastfew years, have really last
decade especially have reallygotten to a point where there's
there's no longer a debate ofcan they do it and how good can
(28:02):
they do it.
It's just you know the financesof how do we make this facility
work type of thing, finances ofhow do we make this facility
work type of thing.
But because it's it's prettymuch shown they can do a more
consistent job than any, evensome of the best farmers.
Even if you're the, if you'rethe best farmer and you're the
best at milking your cow, that'sgreat.
But if all your time, if you'respending hours milking cows,
(28:23):
that's time you could be doingsomething else.
And so the robots get you thatamount of data back.
It's over a hundred data pointsthey're grabbing while the
cow's milking.
And really that falls back tothe same issue that you guys see
in all of your industries andwe all see it.
We're all in charge of gettingeveryone all this data and then
(28:44):
they never do anything with it.
So in the robot milking side,the people that really are
successful with it are the onesthat have adapted kind of the
mindset of okay, we're not goingto have to manage humans
anymore, the you know payroll,all of those things calling in
sick, but we are going to haveto manage maintenance and taking
care of these, and also kind ofadapt more of a technology high
(29:08):
technology mindset and use thisdata for good.
So that's been, while it'sdefinitely not a revolutionary
topic anymore, that's been oneof the more commercial successes
, I think in ag or dairyspecifically.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
There's usually such a big lag between like big new
shiny application and some youknow forefront technology leader
, customer coming out with asuccess story and then kind of
the rest of industry actuallyadopting it yeah, there's in the
majority like that's.
That, you know, I think takesmore years than like you would
(29:47):
think as an outsider yeah, I seeso many cool engineering videos
online and I'm like and then atsome point a new story comes
out like, oh, we're doing this.
And I'm like, didn't I see thaton the internet like 15 years
ago or 10 years ago?
And it was like, yeah, it wasnew and novel, but it never went
into production.
Until like now we were justtalking about single pair,
(30:09):
ethernet oh yeah, with hardingand like.
That's been around for at leasta good like five years, but
we're now finally at a pointwhere we're seeing like more
adoption and it becoming, Iguess, more of a standardized
thing, um, and we're hoping tosee, or likely to see, even more
adoption acceleration over thenext few years yeah, and that
(30:29):
that has actually been driven alittle in part by some of the ag
innovation.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
I mean, I think the automotive industry has really
driven a lot of that as well,because of, you know, cars
cannot put the data they need to.
They're running multiple canbuses now because it's so
limited.
You need single pair ethernetand of course, the distance
limit isn't an issue on a car,but the ag world is that way too
.
So we've had fully autonomoustractors for well over a decade
(30:56):
and of course there's, you know,the prototypes look great, they
do everything well and there'sa lot of refinement behind that.
But then there's the regulatoryside of it of who's, how are we
going to move these?
Who's gonna be in charge of it?
So to this day, most newtractors you buy will do an
entire field all by themselves.
(31:17):
You're just sitting there tomake sure it doesn't screw up
and, yeah, and there's certainthings that we haven't crossed
the threshold on of of how doyou monitor the piece of
equipment behind you that it'sdoing the right job, and some of
that issue is the same thingyou see in any sort of
automation is we try to automatethe way we were doing it
(31:38):
without rethinking that.
Maybe that process isn't thebest, most conducive to
automation.
To begin with, one interestingone in ag is actually apples.
So you know how a traditionalapple tree grows and it's a
three-dimensional problem topick that tree and you need a
ladder and everything.
So lately they've all beenstarting to.
There's a trend to grow dwarftrees which grow on a trestle,
(32:00):
just like grapevines.
And now should you bring inrobots later on?
It's a two-dimensional probleminstead of a or a slightly 3D,
but you know it's's.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
It's much easier to solve than a big blooming tree
yeah, absolutely, you can haverows and then just, you know,
picking on both sides orwhatever, versus having to get
up in there into each individual.
Yeah, it makes a lot of sensesometimes, like reconfiguring
our process to be more friendlyto automation.
Yeah, although I think thehumanoid robot industry is
(32:30):
really, you know, thinkingthey're going to come in and
just like plant those robotseverywhere where our world is
not made for automation.
Um, do you, are there anythoughts on those sorts of
things in the ag industry?
Is anybody there thinking aboutthat or laughing at it?
Speaker 3 (32:46):
or like.
I haven't seen much at allbecause the, you know, the and
it is the big thing is iscentered around these days.
I just looked at the numbers.
I forget what they were.
The man hours that are spent onproducts lettuce, broccoli and
strawberries are three, you know, astronomically high for total
(33:08):
man hours spent every year.
And there are some roboticbroccoli harvesters.
It's a tricky product to harvest.
One of the big issues you havein automating like something
like a fresh produce of broccoli, sweet corn lettuces.
When they pick it in the field,you know they wrap that head or
(33:28):
they put it in the box andthat's the same exact box that
goes to the grocery store.
Nobody ever touches it again.
So so there's been someattempts of well, why don't we
go through a mass, harvest itand then automate the sortation?
But now you just brought allthat extra product back for no
reason and now you need this bigsorting line and that costs
(33:49):
money and takes up space and itstill screws up and you still
got to get it in the box and getit to the store.
So it's really the.
You know, not every worker isgoing to grade that product
identical, which is a major flawof the system.
But to have a humanoid walk afield and cut a broccoli plant
with a broccoli knife, I don'tthink that's going to be the
(34:11):
answer, especially with thedistance they got to walk.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
It could.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
I'm thinking.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
I'm sure someone will try and it could.
Maybe not a fully humanoidrobot, but one of the trends we
have seen with ag stuff andthere's people on both sides of
it is, as years have gone on, agequipment's gotten larger and
larger because you need tomaximize how much one person can
do, and we're up to 700 andsome horsepower tractors now and
(34:44):
they're kind of keep saying,well, we can't really go much
bigger than this because itcan't fit in one piece on a semi
trailer to get to the farmanymore, and so that's been a
limitation and road sizes andthings like that, which we're a
little more open than countrieslike Europe, but it's starting
to become an issue.
So the trend has been towardslet's make these autonomous.
(35:05):
Well, one big autonomousmachine has a lot of downsides,
so it's been finding that rightsize of.
Instead of planting 48 rows ofcorn with a robot, why don't we
have 12 robots?
Plant six rows?
If I did my math right I don'tthink I did, maybe, and so that
(35:29):
could be the humanoid side or achunk of the humanoid.
You know that arm, themanipulation to grab the product
that may transition over.
I currently, like some of theApple ones and stuff, have a
little suction cup on these.
You know arms that are doingsome different things.
(35:50):
They're not like a fully sixaxis type arm, they're still
kind of on a cartesian plane,but, um, that that's been one
way they've tried to solve that.
But, yeah, you really do needkind of the ambit, uh, or the
dexterity I mean of to get inand actually get that plant, and
it's a challenge way above myhead, um, but it is interesting
(36:11):
to watch how they kind of uh dothat.
Uh, actually, on that note,there is one I know that um
picks, travels along the berries, I think, and is kind of an arm
that comes in and picks them.
So they got half of a humanright that kind of linear.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
If you have any kind of trellis or whatever, yeah,
you could.
I think there's some more.
You know more stuff that can bedone there.
I wonder about teleoperation Isthere anything like that
happening?
Because I know sometimesconditions in the field, like
weather it can be really hot Insome cases there may be like
(36:51):
pesticides in the field that arenot great for people that are
coming in.
Is there any merit to that,like somebody being able to you
get that human judgment, I guess, but they don't have to be out
there, yeah they have.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
There's varying levels of that.
Now Most of the almost all theequipment you can buy new now
has telematics Sometimes,whether you want it or not,
sometimes the manufacturerforces it on you and they.
So what that's kind of allowedis is especially like with
something like a combine whereyou are harvesting grains and
there's a lot of settings toadjust and you just only you
(37:29):
need somebody to sit in the seat, but someone that's skilled
enough to really make thosejudgments as a high value
operator.
You want elsewhere sometimes,and so what they've done is is
multiple ways of say you're afarmer in a big, vast area like
Canada or Australia.
You can daisy chain yoursettings of your combine to the
three, four or five other onesin the field with you.
(37:51):
Other ones are more just.
You're sitting at your officeand managing the machines as
they're spread out and throughthe vision systems they have
installed on some of these nowyou can make those adjustments
remotely to some extent.
You know there's sometimes youstill got to walk behind the
combine and see what's comingout the back.
But um, there's, there'sattempts to move that forward
(38:12):
and of course teleoperation doesexist.
I don't know if it's reallycommercially available yet for
ag.
I know they do it.
Um, I think I saw cat does itfor um, the, the wheel loaders
that are at the ports scoopingout container ships or not
container ships, obviously, butbulk cargo ships Um, they only
(38:32):
run so often there's a guy sitsin a booth in Missouri and he
can run one in the West coastand then run, run on the East
coast.
Whoever needs them next.
He can run one in the WestCoast and then run one on the
East Coast, whoever needs themnext.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
That's pretty cool.
I was going to ask if you'veever heard of Flexiv Not that
they're doing anythingspecifically in ag, but like
that's them.
Flexiv Robotics is trying toreplicate the human wrist and so
they have all these extrasensors that I would think could
, you know, help with ag.
But at the same time, I had,you know, I've had a
(39:05):
conversation with people thatyou know are used to come from
farms and he was like, yeah, butfor how much?
Because, like, some of theselabor forces are coming from not
this country, come over theborder and produce all this and,
(39:26):
you know, do all of this stuffthat that they've been doing for
generations.
And then, you know, then saying, his argument was that we'll
never have how much is thisrobot?
How much is this, you know?
Because because the farmers arenever going to go for that
robot, um, because they stillhave this workforce available,
Um, and it's going to be less.
(39:47):
The workforce is less, um,unless you know, unless you can
figure out what that ROI lookslike and I don't, it's harder to
convince, I think, um, at leastthe farmers that are, you know,
using that labor.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
Right, yeah, and that and that is if you, if you get
into produce, especially becausethose, the migrant labor force
is on a it's a seasonal program,so industries like dairy and
stuff kind of struggle becausethey're 365, but then, but yeah,
with with fresh produce it'sit's seasonal, so migrant is
pretty prevalent there and a lotof them same exact people come
(40:22):
back every single year.
But that's not a cheap laborforce at all.
It actually is pretty expensive.
You have to pay all everythingfor their transportations and
stuff to get them here.
They have, I believe, theWashington minimum wage for H2As
, over $20, you know, relativeto the cost of living, of course
, um, none of the.
(40:44):
I think the lowest H2A minimumwage is double the actual
minimum wage.
And then you have to provideall the housing, uh,
transportation, um, there mayeven be a meal requirement.
There's a there's a lot ofregulations on the housing, um,
so it's, it's, it's certainly atool in their toolbox and it
toolbox and it's a necessary.
(41:04):
It's one that they've kind ofthe industry has settled on as
how to bridge this gap from whatwe were 50 years ago, when it
was a bunch of people pickingtheir own products, to trying to
grow and drive the keep thefood.
I mean really we have thecheapest food in the world and
(41:25):
it's kind of driven by that.
But the labor pool and the costof labor is growing, which does
bring in opportunities forautomation.
And I think the picking at thefield level may be the last one.
The stuff that we're doing isall at the packing house side
and trying to help with thelabor situation there.
(41:49):
But that does bring up a goodpoint of the cost.
And where we got a lot oftraction in that industry is
understanding it's seasonal.
This stuff has four months thatit runs out of the year, so you
can't put the biggest name,latest and greatest plc in there
.
Uh, it needs to hit a pricepoint.
(42:09):
If you show up with that, withthat certain you know one of
those certain big brands, youall the they're not even going
to look um.
So it's understanding that theyreally have that target.
That ROI is has to be in ashort amount of time.
They're working on kind of alimited budget but but still
being able to have enough at theend of the day that you can be
(42:32):
successful as well.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
Yeah, I worked for a while with Festo out in Northern
California and, like Salinas,was my territory, so a lot of
lettuce packing going on there Alot.
But I didn't know this until Ikind of got down there, that the
seasons they have Yuma, arizona, and then the Salinas
California area and theirseasons are slightly different,
and so they will pack up thewhole lines and take it down to
(42:56):
Arizona during that time andthen pack them back up, because
I guess there's just like thosetwo places and kind of the two
different seasons.
Primarily, and Mexico fills inwhen those two are out of season
for lettuce.
Oh, okay, yeah, I guess some ofthem are probably transporting
that machinery then down there.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
Some do.
Some have separate operationsdown there, but then they're
able to stagger their season alittle to where they do.
They'll move the coolingequipment.
And now these, these are noteasy to move.
I mean a vacuum cooler.
It takes a few semis to moveand it's a 500 horsepower
ammonia refrigeration skid.
You know these.
(43:35):
It's a big chore, but uh, thethe traveling cooling systems
were very big the past 30 orplus years.
Um, to try and spread that cost, uh to the point, a number of
the packagers and growersactually started their own
cooling companies to cool forothers.
And and as as the industry isconsolidated, as industries do,
(43:59):
uh, more people have just kindof been able to afford to leave
their systems a little morepermanent.
But but yeah, it is still stillcommon to move them around to
try and offset that cost of, youknow, a vacuum tube, like I
said, it's a couple of milliondollars and and it doesn't make
you any money when it's justsitting for eight months out of
the year.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Yeah, have you seen any other kind of um
applications that maybe, uh,farmers are like co-opping or I
guess I'm thinking of, like innapa valley, for instance, a lot
of smaller winemakers.
they don't bottle, they don'thave bottling lines so they're
like mobile bottling trucks thatwill come during bottling
season or whatever that time is,and they'll just, you know,
pull up to one of these wineriesand bottle all their barrels
(44:42):
and then move on to the next one.
Is there any technology likethat, other than like the
lettuce or the stuff that wejust talked about moving,
because I know, like in the agindustry, there are a lot of
co-ops for certain things, right?
Right Like dairy farms, a lot ofthem co-op, like they sell all
their milk together as a groupto grocers or something like
(45:03):
that.
Can you talk a little bit aboutthat?
I'm just always interested in,like the applications of sharing
and community in differentindustries.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Yeah, yeah, there's one that we've been involved in
recently.
That's not anything superglamorous, but it is an example
of it.
It's not anything superglamorous, but it is an example
of it is there's a push for feed.
The feeds that get fed toanimals are constantly evolving
and there's a mix of byproductsand different ways to feed them,
(45:30):
and one that's been discoveredis that dry, fine ground corn
seems to be one of the betteringredients for high producing
dairy cows.
So there's been a huge push uphere.
Everybody wants fine groundcorn.
It's also logistically easierbecause you can buy and sell dry
corn.
It's a lot harder to buy andsell wet corn because that only
(45:51):
happens in the fall when youharvest it.
So the cost to put in, you knowyou put in this milling system
to generate this, but thereagain it sits for a lot of the
year.
So we've been automating a lotof those mills to run fully
autonomously.
Pretty much lights out.
And then what some of thesepeople are doing is putting in
(46:11):
extra bins where they'll makeproduct for other local farmers
and sell to them, and then oursystem just detects once they
pick up their load it'll refillit and kind of go from there.
So that that's kind of a smallscale way of just.
You know it's usually one tofive at the most.
You know, kind of together.
(46:32):
I don't know that, I don't knowany of them are necessarily
pooling resources to build one.
Some might, but a lot of themit's.
You know I'm going to be theone I'm going to build it, I'm
going to charge you this amountof money type of thing, uh.
And then, as you mentioned, thecooperative thing has been part
of ag forever.
So a lot of the inputs thatfarmers buy the seeds, the
fertilizers and things all comethrough cooperatives.
(46:53):
And then um, dairy, a lot ofthem are in co-ops.
The dairy I grew up on umthere's.
Their milk goes to privateprocessor but there's still a
co-op kind of that they're apart of and that comes back to
actually almost the opposite ofwhat you were talking about.
We're starting to see some of indairy around here.
(47:14):
The past decade or so is peoplestarting to do some of their
own processing, people startingto do some of their own
processing.
If you're near a large metroarea, there's a big demand for
locally produced stuff wherepeople can come out and look at
your cows and so that has helpedsome people that's a much
higher profit margin than youwould get selling it as a
(47:36):
commodity.
Naturally you have a lot ofoverhead in doing that, but that
is something people have done,and the same thing that you
mentioned with the wine growers.
If someone is new and makingtheir own cheese, they'll
sometimes go to a smallercheesemaker and just have them
private label something for them, because the licensing and
regulations is a lot of work anda lot of risk to invest all
(47:59):
that up front.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
Yeah, so I'm going to connect that point back to come
to OT Skatecon, so that you canfind other automation
professionals that you cancollaborate with If there are
things that either you are notbig enough to handle or areas
(48:24):
that are adjacent to things.
You know what are you going tobe talking about at OT Skatecon,
vinny, and why should peoplewant to?
I don't know.
Yeah, what are they going tohear about that?
Maybe they can reach out to youor consider you a resource on
in their business going forward.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
Right, I'm listed as talking about ag automation, so
probably a few of the thingswe've talked about here today,
and of course I have somenatural other things of just how
to navigate the world, oftrying to do your own automation
thing, and a lot of that hasbeen around how to kind of
(49:00):
create your own little marketthat doesn't exist, and uh, of
course people can always ask metechnical questions, but uh, I'm
no, I'm no expert there, I justhave my opinions.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
So it looks like we're about, uh, getting close
to an hour here.
So, allie, whatever, what?
Speaker 2 (49:18):
other questions do you have?
Sure, so when I start I have achemical engineering background
and my first process engineeringjob was growing algae, and so
we got like crazy into like, uh,greenhouse automation, and so
there's just so much um that weused to look at there and then
we would try to grow it withlights and like.
(49:39):
So I know about verticalfarming and like, I guess, have
you gotten into any of thatstuff Like or uh, have you do?
Do any of your currentcustomers experiment, uh with
some of that stuff?
Um, and you know, does thatstuff interest you?
And like, how has it changed?
I guess?
Cause it's been.
It's been like 10 years for mesince I touched greenhouse
automations.
Yeah, and it's been like 10years for me since I touched
(49:59):
greenhouse automations.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
Yeah, and it does in a way.
A lot of that was all you know.
The big push of the verticalstuff was a lot of venture
backed and there's people thenthat were also getting back to
create a system for those and,like we all know, you know if
(50:23):
you can build enough ofsomething.
It's substantially cheaper tobuild a microcontroller of your
own design versus using a PLC.
So it's to hit that price pointfor ag.
But the vertical thing is a bitof a topic in the ag world.
It's a contested topic becausethere's people that see it as
the way of the future andthere's people that see it as
actually incredibly inefficientand unsustainable.
So somewhere in the middle isprobably where that is.
(50:44):
I don't deal with any truevertical farms.
I deal with people that grow inhigh tops and things like that
of greenhouses, but nothing thatis a true thing you see, of a
farm downtown New York City withnothing other than water and
somehow they get all of theirinputs in there and it's better
for the environment.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
Yeah, I think oftentimes there's a lot of like
hidden costs and things likethat.
Like, oh, we're going to save alot on this.
And then you're like, oh, butunintended consequences, now we
have.
It is or negatives or whateverright.
Speaker 3 (51:20):
And even you know in my area land is $20,000 an acre
for decent land and that'sincredibly expensive, but
compared to a vertical farm it'sstill some of the cheapest area
you can grow a crop.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Well, give a plug for well, I don't really have
really the name, but I mightshare something more about it
next time I visit Iceland.
But I have someone in myextended family that I actually
haven't met in person, but he'sthe co-founder of a company
where they're buildingautonomous farms inside of
containers.
In Iceland, our climate, it'svery barren and it's very cold
in the wintertime.
We don't grow a whole lot ofthings other than greenhouse.
(52:04):
We do well with cucumbers andtomatoes and lettuce and a few
other things.
But the idea here is that youcan have a kind of
self-sustaining littleautonomous thing that makes food
in remote local villages andstuff like that that don't have
access to fresh produce,especially not in the winter
time.
We have to, like, import a lotof stuff, uh, and so then it's
(52:25):
not necessarily about costeffectiveness but about access
yeah um.
So I think that that could belike a reasonable application of
something like a verticalfarming or a, you know,
container farming is where youdon't have access to land, um,
or land that has conditions togrow things.
Speaker 3 (52:41):
Yeah, that is a great application for it.
Speaker 1 (52:45):
And then one that I heard about recently and I don't
really know enough about it tosay anything was somebody that
is trying to grow produce incontainers at sea.
Speaker 3 (52:55):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
So that's new, and I don't have much to say about it
other than that's interesting.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
They need the produce , those like squid farmers that
are out there for like two years.
Speaker 3 (53:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
I don't know that they're thinking about putting
it on boats where people are,but rather the farm itself just
being out on the water.
In the water?
I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (53:18):
I don't remember specifically what the reason was
.
They need to grow food on there.
That's a pretty good idea,because they don't let them off
to go get more vegetables, sothey die of B12 poisoning.
No B12 deficiency.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
Well, back in the day it was scurvy.
Speaker 3 (53:33):
It was.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
Holly yesterday was eating a lime.
So she squeezes the lime, shelicks the lime, she drinks the
juice I'm Mexican and then shejust like flipped it open and
just like ate the rest of it.
And we're trying to.
We were just at a conference.
We're trying to prevent gettingsick because we got like
conference season and vitamin Cis a huge thing and I didn't
know until at some point in myadult life that scurvy is
(53:57):
vitamin C deficiency and it wasbecause all these people were
just on a boat for months anddidn't eat anything fresh.
So yeah, one last tangent, Iguess for the fun of the
conversation.
So with that, Vinny, is thereanything that you want to ask or
talk about that we didn't coveror that came to your mind?
Before we do the standard lastquestion and then sign off.
Speaker 3 (54:23):
I think we covered some pretty pretty interesting
topics today cool.
Speaker 1 (54:28):
Then my last question is can you tell us where people
can find you reach out to youif they have any questions?
I projects when I work with youwhere you are your username on
the forums or on Reddit.
No, just kidding.
Yeah, Give us all the thingsthat you want to tell people to
pay attention to and then if youhave anything cool coming up
(54:50):
that we should be looking outfor and we'll make sure to share
.
On Automation Ladies.
Speaker 3 (54:55):
The easiest place is really LinkedIn these days,
probably just my name, and I dotry to keep the company website
updated with some of our recentprojects.
Most of the projects we do areat farms, so we usually don't
have any restrictions on sharinga lot of what we do, which is a
pretty nice spot to be in, yeahthat's huge.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
Yeah, I know a lot of people in other industries are
envious of that because they'relike I do a lot of cool stuff
but it's under nda yeah, yeah,that's a.
Speaker 3 (55:28):
It's not a big thing we run into.
We do have some, but it's not alot.
So that's that's the best placeto try to try to keep those
areas updated as much as aspossible.
Speaker 2 (55:38):
Um what kind of industries do care about that?
Or what type of um farmers docare about hiding some of that?
Um, not a lot like where's thehighest tech stuff going on in
ag?
Speaker 3 (55:55):
there's nothing.
There's nothing that fancygoing on.
Uh, there is no, nobody'scalled me to be a part of it, at
least.
Um, so no, there, I mean thereis.
You know, naturally, if you dosome work for some multinational
oems which would do somesupport with some of them, um,
it's just kind of their standardpractice.
So that's the only time wereally run into it at the farm
(56:16):
side, I mean, if I don't know ifanyone comes.
It seems like an ag in a lot ofag situations that I've had, if
someone comes up to with doingthe true more industrial
integration stuff, just notsomething we ever get involved
(56:45):
with, because ours is right atthe right at the customer's side
and kind of customized for them.
We're not developing some fancyautonomous robot type stuff.
Speaker 1 (56:55):
Okay, yeah, all right .
Well, thank you so much forcoming on the show.
People can connect with Vinnybecause you probably found out
about this episode on LinkedInor if you're listening in your
car through and you got it, youknow, from iTunes or whatever.
You can head over toautomationladiesio If you want
to connect with Vinny.
We'll have a link to hisLinkedIn profile and we'll try
to feel free to keep in touchand update.
(57:16):
If you have any future projectsor links that you want to
publicize, we can put them onyour profile to keep that up to
date.
And, yeah, this was a lot offun.
Thank you so much for chattingwith us and we look forward to
seeing you in July.
And then, anytime you have likea super cool application that
you are allowed to share, feelfree to hit us up so that we can
share that with our audience,cause, especially like videos of
(57:38):
anything getting made that weall eat, I think, like all of us
nerds would love to see that.
Speaker 3 (57:43):
So absolutely thanks for having me all right, thank
you.
Speaker 1 (57:47):
Have a great rest of your day.
Welcome to another episode of Automation Ladies.
This one is pre-recorded in myoffice here in Houston with
Allie on site.
Hey, allie, hi.
So we've been hanging out forthe last few days here.
We've done a couple ofrecordings this week and so
we're not entirely sure whenthis is going to air possibly
sometime after our stint at theassembly show next week and
(00:25):
automate, but we have, yeah,busy conference season coming up
, so we wanted to try to get afew episodes recorded here with
people that we've been waitingto talk to for a long time, one
of them being our guest today,vinny Andrus, who we most
recently saw in person in Dallasat TraceRouteCon, the infamous
training class for networkingindustrial networking run by our
(00:48):
friend Josh Varghese atTraceroute, and that is part of
what inspired our upcomingconference.
That part of why Ali is inHouston is that we were just
touring the Phoenix ContactCustomer Experience.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Center, technology Center.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah, customer technology center.
I'll get the terminologycorrect to make sure that we you
know to finalize hosting ourevent there.
So our event is called OTSkate-a-Con.
You probably have heard aboutit by now If you haven't go
check it out automationladiesioslash OTSkate-a-Con, and Vinny
is going to be one of ourspeakers there as well.
(01:25):
So we are super excited to getyou to you know, get to know him
a little bit and hear hisbackstory, and one of the things
that we bonded over eatingbarbecue, uh, in dallas, was the
fact that he works with a lotof dairies and dairy farms and
has a background in that and andAllie and I actually more of a
family history than directexperience, but my grandfather
(01:48):
worked at a dairy plant hiswhole career making butter.
Allie's grandfather also madebutter, so we have a dairy
lineage, so to speak, and so wegot super excited to talk about
dairy and all kinds of farm andfarm automation with Vinny.
So, vinny, thank you so muchfor coming on to our show.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Absolutely Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
You're welcome.
You're one of the well, not oneof the few people.
It's getting more common thesedays when we say, hey, come on
the show, and you were like,yeah, sure, okay, Made it easy.
Can you tell us for ouraudience?
Just give us a little.
I guess our first question isgenerally can you tell us the
backstory of how the heck yougot into automation?
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah, so I grew up on a dairy farm, as you mentioned,
and actually kind of had alittle stint where I wanted to
be an engineer.
In middle school that took allthe advanced math and then hit
high school and lost thatmotivation and decided to be a
diesel mechanic and ended upgoing to school for crop and
soil science actually so bigtwist of events there and then
(02:50):
came back to the farm to work asa diesel mechanic, did not use
crop and soil science at all andas a mechanic actually disliked
electronics entirely.
I would avoid them and if itneeded it I would just send it
in.
But eventually I read this book.
I wish I could remember thename and if it needed it I would
just send it in.
But eventually I read this book.
I wish I could remember thename.
I think it was ESI something,but it was a guy who wrote this
(03:11):
book on graph paper explainingelectricity.
It was the first one that wasdumbed down enough I actually
understood it.
And then I learned how a relayworks and thought I was smart.
So fast forward a few more years.
We're putting in a new parlorat the farm and an electrician
walks by this alarm interfacebox and it's full of relays, he
goes why didn't they just put aPLC in here?
(03:33):
What's a PLC?
So I look it up and this thinglooks pretty neat.
Tried my hand at some otherprogramming in the past.
I always liked thinking withcomputer games but never really
stuck it out, and so this is anice low barrier to entry.
I could get dinking withcomputer games but never really
stuck it out, and so this is anice low barrier to entry.
I could get along with this.
It's visual and got a PLC,taught myself how to do it,
replaced a few things around thefarm.
(03:55):
Had a close friend in the agcommunity from the East Coast
contact me about making his icemachine for his vegetables run
from his phone and thought, wow,people will pay you to do this.
So got very kind of reallyinterested in that and decided
that I wanted to explore that alittle more and see where things
(04:17):
went.
So decided electricalengineering is probably a good
path to go back to school forand it's a terrible choice when
you're older it's very hard todo, but especially electrical
engineering.
But did it anyways and it wasvery interesting.
Did a nice flexible transferprogram they had and had worked
(04:38):
for an integrator for a littlebit, had to leave that to finish
the schooling and had big plansto stay work for a few more
years with other people,hopefully with this goal of
coming back and doing my ownthing.
At some point.
The problem kind of came upthat just had so many people
asking for things in the agcommunity.
Primarily that it was you kindof had to make a choice and so
(05:01):
while I left without the bestknowledge of you know what you
would consider an experiencedperson in the integration world,
I did understand the process wewere trying to automate.
So I kind of went there andit's most of this world is
what's your Rolodex for anoutdated term, I guess
(05:22):
networking and just networking.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
I just said that on your last podcast I used that
term too.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
The Rolodex.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
I don't mean the actual physical Rolodex, I mean
your network.
She has one and I do have anactual physical one.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Yeah, and I have a stack of business cards.
It really is.
And my parents, my whole family, has kind of been big on
networking.
From when we were younger.
My parents kind of instilledthat in us, drug us to all the
different organizations throughdairy farming.
We had Jersey cows, so we werereally active in that and saw
the power of having a nationwidenetwork of people with similar
(06:01):
ideas and similar industries.
And so I kind of developed myown in the ag world through the
years, talking smart on theinternet, things like that, and
really that all kind of cameback.
You know that you had all thesepeople knew who you were, saw
what you were doing and juststarted asking if you could do
stuff.
So that it really grew fromthere.
(06:22):
And and uh, started bitmas, uhthree years ago now, um,
actually like three years andfour days ago officially and and
it's uh really kind of justtaken off primarily through the
word of mouth um, in the freshproduce and dairy and then grain
(06:44):
as well.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Okay, so that's Bitmasked Automation.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Yeah, yeah, correct.
So I didn't like EndressAutomation because spelling my
last name is very hard.
You have to do it phoneticallyover the phone.
So I wanted to be cute and usesomething from computers that
none of your customers wouldunderstand.
So I used BitMask and then, thefirst time I spelt it over the
phone, realized my mistake.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Allie and I were actually just talking about it
earlier.
She was encouraged not to puther own name on her company even
though we so a friend of oursthat David Turner.
He just changed his companyname to Turner process.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Turner process automation.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Turner process automation maybe.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
I think so.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
I think process systems.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
That may be correct.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
But it has the word Turner in it, and now I'll
remember that because his oldcompany name, which was a much
more descriptive, it was justhard for me to keep track of it
it was process and automationspecialists, I think.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
I was like I know it's process and specialists,
but yeah, there's pros and consto I guess those.
I grew up with the last name,haskrimstotir, and so putting my
name on anything would probablybe just like instant suicide.
Yeah, I feel your pain there.
I love the company name, by theway.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Why did you?
I mean, what does it mean toyou outside of?
Like it was cute, like do youhave like some kind of I don't
know what it means to you?
Speaker 3 (08:21):
No, no, there's nothing cool.
I need to come up with a fakeone someday, though, for, uh, if
I ever have to give a fancypresentation, uh, but.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
I bet you could come up with some yeah probably it,
it really was.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
I was sitting in in in school still at the time when
I started it, and just lookingat all the things around us and
I was like, well, I don't know,I mean it's something a little
generic.
It came up.
One was like two end solutions,you know cause binary is two to
the end.
Maybe that would have been abetter idea.
But then, yeah, the bit maskcame up, and then there's a
(08:57):
little debate about properEnglish and if it should be bit
mask or bit masked, which justplain bit mask would have been
way easier to spell.
But it is what it is.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Well, now we've discussed it enough that really
anybody that wants to rememberit probably can.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Yeah, don't forget the E-D.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
And I'm assuming your website would be what
Bitmaskautomationcom.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
It's actually just Bitmaskcom.
Keep it even simpler.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Oh okay, Nobody had that yeah yeah, that that's that
also nowadays can play a bigfactor in what company name you
choose yes you got to go see ifthe domain is available and then
you're like, oh, am I going togo fornet or io, or do I have to
change the name or buy outwhoever ownscom?
Somebody actually reached outto us recently offering to sell
(09:44):
us the domainautomationladiescom.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
For like several hundred or maybe several
thousand dollars, I don'tremember, but we're good.
We were like nah, we're fine.
So you and then also, like Iguess your company name does not
constrain you to farm orproduce or any of the particular
applications that you work onno, it doesn't, and that was
part of the goal.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
At first.
I had no idea where any of thiswas going to go.
I actually didn't even it'sactually it didn't even get
registered as bitmast automation.
I added that in later so peoplewould know that that's what
we're doing, because at the timeis doing a bunch of 3d printers
, doing a bunch of a whole bunchof things, and and it wasn't
really until um you know, uh,the last year, especially where
(10:32):
really just honed in on the eggstuff you know, went through
some read, some books, wentthrough some leadership things
and a lot of them these daystalk about find what you're kind
of good at and just stick tothat.
You know, every time you branchout, you're spending a lot of
time and resources trying tolearn something new, which is
fine to an extent, but that hasa cost to it.
(10:54):
So if you can find an area thatyou're good at, stick to it,
and there's plenty of people inthe industrial space that are
doing a great job, space thatare doing a great job.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
If someone asked me to do something, I would
consider it but we're notactively looking to get into
those markets if they're notclosely related to HAG.
Yeah Well, that's a greatposition to be in, to have the
network and to be well-known forwhat you can do and for people
to have that trust that theywant to call somebody that they
know or that they know of,versus you know, versus trying
(11:27):
to maybe find somebody that hasthe top of the line, best
experience, most fancyeverything, but you know they,
they're unknown to you.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
And I think we'll do they discount how much that
emotional factor plays intobusiness decisions.
Sometimes, just knowing thatyou can call somebody and that
they're not going to BS you overthe phone or whatever like
that's that's a huge value inbusiness versus just yeah, you
may or may not like be the mostexperienced company that's been
around for the longest doingthis, um, uh, at least for me
(11:58):
and I see that with my dad toouh, most of his projects have
come from people that know him.
My job came from somebody thatknows me.
If I had sent out my resume toquote beam to become employee
number one and they didn't knowme, they'd be like I don't think
it would have even made it toanybody's desk.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
One thing that you said, though, about your parents
, and that's really cool.
I you know, and I'm going totake this lesson and try to
teach my kids that you knownetworking early, when you just
to get to know and make surethat you are plugged into those
communities later on, when youhave something to offer.
You know those people, know youRight, and I don't think that
(12:35):
you can ever start too earlywith those sorts of things.
If there's a way, right, I'mnot going to like start shoving
my kids to trade shows and likemake them hand out business
cards.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Yeah, I mean, and a lot of mine was, you know, the
stuff with my parents was alittle going to conventions and
all that and the events morein-person networking, Most of my
acquaintances.
To this day I still don't evenhaven't met half of them in
person and even this firstcustomer of mine he had never
(13:05):
met me.
I didn't even know his real name, because this goes back to
forums where you didn't use yourreal name back in the day and
most of that networking with allthose people really was I kind
of.
I've always I like to learn,which most of us engineers types
like to, and so people wouldpost a question and I would not
(13:28):
know the answer, but I'd be like, well, we could figure out what
a likely answer would be to itand actually do a lot of
research and try to figure outthat answer, because now you
have that knowledge, because ifsomeone doesn't ask the question
and if you get a thousandpeople on the internet asking
questions, that's a lot morepool of knowledge to draw from
and so things that interested meand answer them and I guess
(13:50):
that just kind of created a lotof connections with a lot of
people that eventually evolved,you know, through emails or
Facebook or whatever it wasstarted to learn the real faces
behind some of them and connectwith a nice small group of them.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
So what forums specifically have you been
frequenting or use?
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Well, so back in the day, a lot of the ag ones came
from one called New Ag Talk.
Actually it was one of theoriginal ag forums from the 90s.
It wasn't called that initially, but I got on it kind of late.
My forums experiences startedwhen I was younger, as a
mechanic working on the farm.
I worked on people's Duramaaxdiesel pickups on the side and
(14:34):
so I was in all of thosedifferent forms.
That was kind of my firstexposure, and so when these
companies keep updating theirforums the past five, ten years
and they move away from the vbulletin format, I'm still kind
of stuck in my ways.
Uh, but that that was where theexperience.
What's that?
Speaker 1 (14:51):
yeah, it doesn't be.
Forums are their own experienceand I don't.
In my opinion, they don't needto be messed with, like just if
it's an active forum and peopleare on there and they are still
exchanging ideas and whatever,like leave it alone.
I don't.
I don't know, maybe just me.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Yeah, I think the last one I remember being you
know, because naturally we alllook at PLCsnet and that was the
last one in kind of the trueVBulletin format and I know it
changed.
I don't know if it's still apart of VBulletin, but I know it
just updated the last couple ofmonths.
So that was the last shred ofyouth, I guess, gone.
But these days I don't spendmuch time on a lot of the, the
(15:31):
ag related ones as much.
I stay more in using the, thesame philosophy kind of on some
of the forums that are specificfor the hardware use, or you
know, the two generic.
There are the three genericplaces we all go to for PLC
stuff PLC'snet, reddit andLinkedIn, and just try to stay
(15:54):
up on everything as much as Ican.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, so that's a great tip to any of our
listeners.
If you are interested inbranching out into areas that
you don't have much of a networkor you need more knowledge,
those are some great forums tohit up.
I don't know about Mr PLC.
Did you ever frequent that hitup?
Uh, I don't know about mr plc.
Did you ever frequent thatforum?
Speaker 3 (16:13):
I myself didn't know that one, and there was like a
control forum that night orsomething too.
I've never I've come across alot of them, but I I'm a late
bloomer really in the plc world.
I've only been in it for uhwell, realistically like five
years.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
So yeah, okay, well, now you have some tips as to
where the discussions arehappening, at least for people
that have kind of come into itin the last five years.
And yeah, go answer questions,go add some value and, like
vinny said, you don't often youdon't necessarily have to know
the answer to the question to beable to, you know, be part of
the discussion.
Maybe add a.
(16:49):
Maybe this would help or maybethere's something here.
I found that to work a lot forme just trying to be helpful
even if I don't know an answer.
If nobody's given the greatanswer, just try to point to
some resources or bring otherpeople into the conversation.
It's a great way to kind oforganically network and get
people to pay attention or theysee you around more often.
(17:11):
We were just at last week atthis association for high tech
distribution and I was talkingto another startup founder
yesterday who was going to hisfirst event with their new
company it's a tech crunchconference and I was like, yeah,
at least in my experience,people want to see you around
three to four times before theystart paying attention to your
pitch.
(17:31):
So don't just try to go.
I mean, everybody has if you'rehaving something, if you have
to sell something.
It's hard because you kind ofhave to go try to sell yourself,
but if at all, if you can justparticipate before you have
anything to sell, that can be ahuge win just to get people to
be familiar with you.
Um, and I see, in our industryanyway, it seems to be a big
thing to have some references orbe known in the industry or the
(17:55):
community or something, versusjust like especially people
coming in from outside theindustry that have all the
answers but I don't.
I see generally that they don't, you know, they don't get the
reception that they're lookingfor when they come in like that.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yeah, it's one of it's interesting.
You mentioned the number oftouches you need to, you know,
get someone to be comfortablewith you.
I was reading a book right nowabout prospecting that's
mentions that specific thing andthey do say plan 10 to 20
different touches for someonethat's completely cold to you,
you know that you have noprevious relationship with, and
(18:31):
that can be as simple as theysee you and make a social media
post.
I mean that counts, but it'smore that awareness of it and
where we see a lot of that dropdown to very low numbers or
almost instant sales, is reallythe networking side of it.
I mean, ag is small, like anyother industry, and so it seems
like most of our customers notmore than one or two connections
(18:57):
removed from them, we alwaysknow someone that's the same
person.
It's kind of an automaticreferral that way, if you
weren't directly referred in thefirst place and then, like you
said, a newcomer just coming in,it can be tough without the
background.
Now, granted, I mean at least Igrew up in it, so I kind of have
that crutch to fall back on.
That doesn't mean you have togrow up in an industry to be
(19:20):
good at it.
I didn't grow up with PLCs.
It's debatable if I'm good atthem, but having that experience
really, especially in oursindustry, is useful because
these everyone that we'reworking with is new to PLC.
So, versus going intoestablished manufacturing where
(19:41):
they say you have to use thisbrand PLC, here's our
programming style guide.
You're more you know.
In a way you're almost asubcontractor to that company
themselves, doing the workexactly the way they want it and
they know exactly what theywant, which is can have its
advantages as well.
It's a lot easier to plan for abudget where the stuff we're
(20:01):
doing they may not even haveheard of a PLC.
So we're using hardware thatmakes our development times fast
and then most of the time isspent on understanding their
process and pointing out areaswhere things can be done.
You know, had a recentconversation with someone who
wanted to delay the startup of amotor so that things could warm
(20:22):
up and I said, well, yeah, ifwe tie that in, we can automate
that delay.
He said, yeah, but if it'salready been running it doesn't
need the delay.
And you know it's the thinkingand timers and relays that is a
challenge to add, but in thisenvironment we can add this.
So it's really you can't pusheverything on everyone at once.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
It's really get in, get something working for for
them, let the wheels startturning, then come back and
update a lot of the softwareyeah, and I think a lot of
people you know they're theyneed some small wins to get
comfortable yeah um, and I thinktoo, if you get, if you go too
big on the scope to begin with,there's more potential issues,
(21:06):
especially if the customer is isinexperienced, then they may
not know what to ask, or, youknow, there there can be gaps in
communication, um, and there'sa lot, you know, more potential
for failure on a big project,and then a lot of people get
turned off from automationaltogether they will you really
only have one shot, or what wasthat, ellie?
Speaker 3 (21:26):
if they get burned at all, they're just like I'm good
exactly, yeah, you, you reallyonly have one shot, especially,
uh, you know, ag, it's usuallythe guy signing the check, or
girl signing the check is theone that is operating this stuff
.
So there, if it doesn't workhalf the time, they won't even
tell you, they just won't callyou again.
And and they'll you know,naturally, if someone else asks
(21:49):
them about it, they're going totell them their experience with
it.
So it's kind of staying incontact with them of you know,
cause mistakes get made, thingsget misinterpreted.
It's like, how can we improvethis to make it work?
Uh, fortunately we haven'treally had too many issues with
that.
We try to stay pretty closecontact, uh, with all the
customers and we keep we usuallyhave remote access to always
(22:11):
keep anything working.
But, yeah, it's it really getin.
Just get them comfortable witha little lately.
You know, I guess a good exampleof finding a way in the door
has been level monitoring for us, for whatever reason everybody
likes.
Nobody likes to climb a grainbin to know what's in it, for
starters, and manure is veryhard to measure because it's uh,
(22:34):
traditional sensors don't work.
Radar is really the only thingthat works.
So when you can come in andkind of solve a problem that's
really been annoying them.
That's a great way to open thedoor and a simple way for them
to be comfortable because it isreliable.
Um, and then from there you youcan kind of progress, but you
do still need a place to testall your new ideas.
(22:55):
And so finding that customerthat is the tinkerer and does
understand it and is willing totest you, know your new ideas
and knows how to get it runningat midnight when you're not
there, that's a useful avenue tofind as well.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Yeah, do you have many of those?
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Most of them are relatives and they get the
unknown family discount of.
They get to try my new ideas.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Okay, that's a good one.
Yeah, you know, you mentionedkind of before that you know the
small world aspect and yeah, wewere just at a party.
I threw a networking partyyesterday and I bought a book I
don't have it with me, but I sawit from a post from a
connection on LinkedIn who had apicture with them and the guy
(23:45):
that wrote the book.
And then I looked at that guy'sprofile and I was like, oh, he
wrote this book that looksinteresting and I ordered it.
And then, right after chapterone, it had a challenge to you
know, just do it like book yourown party and get it started.
And I did and I invited my dad.
It says like you should mix updifferent groups of people,
right?
So the point is to kind of likerun this structured two-hour
(24:07):
networking party with differentgroups of people that you know,
um, and friends, family, uh,neighbors and then like
professional connections, um andI my dad is both a professional
connection and my neighbor andmy family, I guess, um, but he's
, you know, we're from iceland,he does not network much, he
doesn't get out much, and hehappened to make a connection at
(24:29):
this party yesterday.
So he's from iceland, we'refrom iceland, um, and my dad has
one business that runstemperature monitoring for
grocery stores, uh, coolers,fridges, freezers, pharmacies
and a few other types of things.
But, and this, this woman thatshowed up to the party yesterday
has taken over running herfather's business and they, um,
do what was it?
(24:50):
Allie the?
Speaker 2 (24:51):
air curtains.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
They're like air curtains for refrigeration
systems, like big walk-ins, likewalk-ins in the grocery stores
where you walk into, like theCostco, like refrigerated rooms
and she has a big presence inIceland of all places Like they,
because most of our grocerystores there use those instead
of having, like the you know,two aisles of like frozen foods,
(25:12):
uh, freezers, and, like I, whatare the odds of that?
But that that was their firsttime meeting.
They didn't need the 12, youknow touches because they had
such a freaking niche thing thatthey connected on, so that was
really easy to make thatconnection.
Um, and when you run intosomebody that has a solution to
a very niche problem that youand only a few people care about
(25:35):
, that's one of those, I think,examples that you can skip the
12 touches, because just thatinvolvement in that tiny little
niche is enough to create sometrust or or enough interest to
do some business together.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
That actually connected to a point we made
earlier.
My next question that I thoughtof where you were talking was
like what are some of your mostfavorite or coolest applications
that you've gotten to work onon the farm or elsewhere?
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Well, as I said, my first paid project was an ice
machine and I still have a softspot for those.
They're, you know, these days,are.
It's a relatively simple thing.
We've done them quite a fewtimes, but there's still nothing
more satisfying than, you know,turning starting that thing up
and then seeing ice drop out ofit.
Um, and for some context, Iguess, because for audio, uh,
(26:28):
these are not.
Some of my friends ask me tooyou're working on hotel ice
machines and stuff.
No, these you knowcommercialized plants, for
produce primarily.
So they usually do about 100 to300,000 pounds of ice a day and
you know 150 to 300 horsepowerto run these, just the ammonia
(26:49):
side of them, and so there's alot going on on them to make
them work.
You know the ammoniarefrigeration system, the ice
builder itself and the storageand all the infeed sides of
everything and they need to runlights out.
But those are seeing the icedrop because it is a cyclic
(27:09):
process.
At Tube Ice, every 10 minutesthey drop ice and it's pretty
satisfying to watch.
But the you know some of themore unique ones.
We've been doing some stuffwith ag robotics.
We don't do the robots, but theintegrating of all the systems
around it.
That's fun to be a part ofbecause that is the way ag is
moving.
Fun to be a part of becausethat is the way ag is moving.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
So what are some of the coolest innovations in that
space that you've seen actuallywork out in the field?
What types of robots have youbeen integrating?
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Melking robots are not a new thing by any means.
They've been around for 30years Commercially, actually
almost 30.
But those have really the lastfew years, have really last
decade especially have reallygotten to a point where there's
there's no longer a debate ofcan they do it and how good can
(28:02):
they do it.
It's just you know the financesof how do we make this facility
work type of thing, finances ofhow do we make this facility
work type of thing.
But because it's it's prettymuch shown they can do a more
consistent job than any, evensome of the best farmers.
Even if you're the, if you'rethe best farmer and you're the
best at milking your cow, that'sgreat.
But if all your time, if you'respending hours milking cows,
(28:23):
that's time you could be doingsomething else.
And so the robots get you thatamount of data back.
It's over a hundred data pointsthey're grabbing while the
cow's milking.
And really that falls back tothe same issue that you guys see
in all of your industries andwe all see it.
We're all in charge of gettingeveryone all this data and then
(28:44):
they never do anything with it.
So in the robot milking side,the people that really are
successful with it are the onesthat have adapted kind of the
mindset of okay, we're not goingto have to manage humans
anymore, the you know payroll,all of those things calling in
sick, but we are going to haveto manage maintenance and taking
care of these, and also kind ofadapt more of a technology high
(29:08):
technology mindset and use thisdata for good.
So that's been, while it'sdefinitely not a revolutionary
topic anymore, that's been oneof the more commercial successes
, I think in ag or dairyspecifically.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
There's usually such a big lag between like big new
shiny application and some youknow forefront technology leader
, customer coming out with asuccess story and then kind of
the rest of industry actuallyadopting it yeah, there's in the
majority like that's.
That, you know, I think takesmore years than like you would
(29:47):
think as an outsider yeah, I seeso many cool engineering videos
online and I'm like and then atsome point a new story comes
out like, oh, we're doing this.
And I'm like, didn't I see thaton the internet like 15 years
ago or 10 years ago?
And it was like, yeah, it wasnew and novel, but it never went
into production.
Until like now we were justtalking about single pair,
(30:09):
ethernet oh yeah, with hardingand like.
That's been around for at leasta good like five years, but
we're now finally at a pointwhere we're seeing like more
adoption and it becoming, Iguess, more of a standardized
thing, um, and we're hoping tosee, or likely to see, even more
adoption acceleration over thenext few years yeah, and that
(30:29):
that has actually been driven alittle in part by some of the ag
innovation.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
I mean, I think the automotive industry has really
driven a lot of that as well,because of, you know, cars
cannot put the data they need to.
They're running multiple canbuses now because it's so
limited.
You need single pair ethernetand of course, the distance
limit isn't an issue on a car,but the ag world is that way too
.
So we've had fully autonomoustractors for well over a decade
(30:56):
and of course there's, you know,the prototypes look great, they
do everything well and there'sa lot of refinement behind that.
But then there's the regulatoryside of it of who's, how are we
going to move these?
Who's gonna be in charge of it?
So to this day, most newtractors you buy will do an
entire field all by themselves.
(31:17):
You're just sitting there tomake sure it doesn't screw up
and, yeah, and there's certainthings that we haven't crossed
the threshold on of of how doyou monitor the piece of
equipment behind you that it'sdoing the right job, and some of
that issue is the same thingyou see in any sort of
automation is we try to automatethe way we were doing it
(31:38):
without rethinking that.
Maybe that process isn't thebest, most conducive to
automation.
To begin with, one interestingone in ag is actually apples.
So you know how a traditionalapple tree grows and it's a
three-dimensional problem topick that tree and you need a
ladder and everything.
So lately they've all beenstarting to.
There's a trend to grow dwarftrees which grow on a trestle,
(32:00):
just like grapevines.
And now should you bring inrobots later on?
It's a two-dimensional probleminstead of a or a slightly 3D,
but you know it's's.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
It's much easier to solve than a big blooming tree
yeah, absolutely, you can haverows and then just, you know,
picking on both sides orwhatever, versus having to get
up in there into each individual.
Yeah, it makes a lot of sensesometimes, like reconfiguring
our process to be more friendlyto automation.
Yeah, although I think thehumanoid robot industry is
(32:30):
really, you know, thinkingthey're going to come in and
just like plant those robotseverywhere where our world is
not made for automation.
Um, do you, are there anythoughts on those sorts of
things in the ag industry?
Is anybody there thinking aboutthat or laughing at it?
Speaker 3 (32:46):
or like.
I haven't seen much at allbecause the, you know, the and
it is the big thing is iscentered around these days.
I just looked at the numbers.
I forget what they were.
The man hours that are spent onproducts lettuce, broccoli and
strawberries are three, you know, astronomically high for total
(33:08):
man hours spent every year.
And there are some roboticbroccoli harvesters.
It's a tricky product to harvest.
One of the big issues you havein automating like something
like a fresh produce of broccoli, sweet corn lettuces.
When they pick it in the field,you know they wrap that head or
(33:28):
they put it in the box andthat's the same exact box that
goes to the grocery store.
Nobody ever touches it again.
So so there's been someattempts of well, why don't we
go through a mass, harvest itand then automate the sortation?
But now you just brought allthat extra product back for no
reason and now you need this bigsorting line and that costs
(33:49):
money and takes up space and itstill screws up and you still
got to get it in the box and getit to the store.
So it's really the.
You know, not every worker isgoing to grade that product
identical, which is a major flawof the system.
But to have a humanoid walk afield and cut a broccoli plant
with a broccoli knife, I don'tthink that's going to be the
(34:11):
answer, especially with thedistance they got to walk.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
It could.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
I'm thinking.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
I'm sure someone will try and it could.
Maybe not a fully humanoidrobot, but one of the trends we
have seen with ag stuff andthere's people on both sides of
it is, as years have gone on, agequipment's gotten larger and
larger because you need tomaximize how much one person can
do, and we're up to 700 andsome horsepower tractors now and
(34:44):
they're kind of keep saying,well, we can't really go much
bigger than this because itcan't fit in one piece on a semi
trailer to get to the farmanymore, and so that's been a
limitation and road sizes andthings like that, which we're a
little more open than countrieslike Europe, but it's starting
to become an issue.
So the trend has been towardslet's make these autonomous.
(35:05):
Well, one big autonomousmachine has a lot of downsides,
so it's been finding that rightsize of.
Instead of planting 48 rows ofcorn with a robot, why don't we
have 12 robots?
Plant six rows?
If I did my math right I don'tthink I did, maybe, and so that
(35:29):
could be the humanoid side or achunk of the humanoid.
You know that arm, themanipulation to grab the product
that may transition over.
I currently, like some of theApple ones and stuff, have a
little suction cup on these.
You know arms that are doingsome different things.
(35:50):
They're not like a fully sixaxis type arm, they're still
kind of on a cartesian plane,but, um, that that's been one
way they've tried to solve that.
But, yeah, you really do needkind of the ambit, uh, or the
dexterity I mean of to get inand actually get that plant, and
it's a challenge way above myhead, um, but it is interesting
(36:11):
to watch how they kind of uh dothat.
Uh, actually, on that note,there is one I know that um
picks, travels along the berries, I think, and is kind of an arm
that comes in and picks them.
So they got half of a humanright that kind of linear.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
If you have any kind of trellis or whatever, yeah,
you could.
I think there's some more.
You know more stuff that can bedone there.
I wonder about teleoperation Isthere anything like that
happening?
Because I know sometimesconditions in the field, like
weather it can be really hot Insome cases there may be like
(36:51):
pesticides in the field that arenot great for people that are
coming in.
Is there any merit to that,like somebody being able to you
get that human judgment, I guess, but they don't have to be out
there, yeah they have.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
There's varying levels of that.
Now Most of the almost all theequipment you can buy new now
has telematics Sometimes,whether you want it or not,
sometimes the manufacturerforces it on you and they.
So what that's kind of allowedis is especially like with
something like a combine whereyou are harvesting grains and
there's a lot of settings toadjust and you just only you
(37:29):
need somebody to sit in the seat, but someone that's skilled
enough to really make thosejudgments as a high value
operator.
You want elsewhere sometimes,and so what they've done is is
multiple ways of say you're afarmer in a big, vast area like
Canada or Australia.
You can daisy chain yoursettings of your combine to the
three, four or five other onesin the field with you.
(37:51):
Other ones are more just.
You're sitting at your officeand managing the machines as
they're spread out and throughthe vision systems they have
installed on some of these nowyou can make those adjustments
remotely to some extent.
You know there's sometimes youstill got to walk behind the
combine and see what's comingout the back.
But um, there's, there'sattempts to move that forward
(38:12):
and of course teleoperation doesexist.
I don't know if it's reallycommercially available yet for
ag.
I know they do it.
Um, I think I saw cat does itfor um, the, the wheel loaders
that are at the ports scoopingout container ships or not
container ships, obviously, butbulk cargo ships Um, they only
(38:32):
run so often there's a guy sitsin a booth in Missouri and he
can run one in the West coastand then run, run on the East
coast.
Whoever needs them next.
He can run one in the WestCoast and then run one on the
East Coast, whoever needs themnext.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
That's pretty cool.
I was going to ask if you'veever heard of Flexiv Not that
they're doing anythingspecifically in ag, but like
that's them.
Flexiv Robotics is trying toreplicate the human wrist and so
they have all these extrasensors that I would think could
, you know, help with ag.
But at the same time, I had,you know, I've had a
(39:05):
conversation with people thatyou know are used to come from
farms and he was like, yeah, butfor how much?
Because, like, some of theselabor forces are coming from not
this country, come over theborder and produce all this and,
(39:26):
you know, do all of this stuffthat that they've been doing for
generations.
And then, you know, then saying, his argument was that we'll
never have how much is thisrobot?
How much is this, you know?
Because because the farmers arenever going to go for that
robot, um, because they stillhave this workforce available,
Um, and it's going to be less.
(39:47):
The workforce is less, um,unless you know, unless you can
figure out what that ROI lookslike and I don't, it's harder to
convince, I think, um, at leastthe farmers that are, you know,
using that labor.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
Right, yeah, and that and that is if you, if you get
into produce, especially becausethose, the migrant labor force
is on a it's a seasonal program,so industries like dairy and
stuff kind of struggle becausethey're 365, but then, but yeah,
with with fresh produce it'sit's seasonal, so migrant is
pretty prevalent there and a lotof them same exact people come
(40:22):
back every single year.
But that's not a cheap laborforce at all.
It actually is pretty expensive.
You have to pay all everythingfor their transportations and
stuff to get them here.
They have, I believe, theWashington minimum wage for H2As
, over $20, you know, relativeto the cost of living, of course
, um, none of the.
(40:44):
I think the lowest H2A minimumwage is double the actual
minimum wage.
And then you have to provideall the housing, uh,
transportation, um, there mayeven be a meal requirement.
There's a there's a lot ofregulations on the housing, um,
so it's, it's, it's certainly atool in their toolbox and it
toolbox and it's a necessary.
(41:04):
It's one that they've kind ofthe industry has settled on as
how to bridge this gap from whatwe were 50 years ago, when it
was a bunch of people pickingtheir own products, to trying to
grow and drive the keep thefood.
I mean really we have thecheapest food in the world and
(41:25):
it's kind of driven by that.
But the labor pool and the costof labor is growing, which does
bring in opportunities forautomation.
And I think the picking at thefield level may be the last one.
The stuff that we're doing isall at the packing house side
and trying to help with thelabor situation there.
(41:49):
But that does bring up a goodpoint of the cost.
And where we got a lot oftraction in that industry is
understanding it's seasonal.
This stuff has four months thatit runs out of the year, so you
can't put the biggest name,latest and greatest plc in there
.
Uh, it needs to hit a pricepoint.
(42:09):
If you show up with that, withthat certain you know one of
those certain big brands, youall the they're not even going
to look um.
So it's understanding that theyreally have that target.
That ROI is has to be in ashort amount of time.
They're working on kind of alimited budget but but still
being able to have enough at theend of the day that you can be
(42:32):
successful as well.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
Yeah, I worked for a while with Festo out in Northern
California and, like Salinas,was my territory, so a lot of
lettuce packing going on there Alot.
But I didn't know this until Ikind of got down there, that the
seasons they have Yuma, arizona, and then the Salinas
California area and theirseasons are slightly different,
and so they will pack up thewhole lines and take it down to
(42:56):
Arizona during that time andthen pack them back up, because
I guess there's just like thosetwo places and kind of the two
different seasons.
Primarily, and Mexico fills inwhen those two are out of season
for lettuce.
Oh, okay, yeah, I guess some ofthem are probably transporting
that machinery then down there.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
Some do.
Some have separate operationsdown there, but then they're
able to stagger their season alittle to where they do.
They'll move the coolingequipment.
And now these, these are noteasy to move.
I mean a vacuum cooler.
It takes a few semis to moveand it's a 500 horsepower
ammonia refrigeration skid.
You know these.
(43:35):
It's a big chore, but uh, thethe traveling cooling systems
were very big the past 30 orplus years.
Um, to try and spread that cost, uh to the point, a number of
the packagers and growersactually started their own
cooling companies to cool forothers.
And and as as the industry isconsolidated, as industries do,
(43:59):
uh, more people have just kindof been able to afford to leave
their systems a little morepermanent.
But but yeah, it is still stillcommon to move them around to
try and offset that cost of, youknow, a vacuum tube, like I
said, it's a couple of milliondollars and and it doesn't make
you any money when it's justsitting for eight months out of
the year.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Yeah, have you seen any other kind of um
applications that maybe, uh,farmers are like co-opping or I
guess I'm thinking of, like innapa valley, for instance, a lot
of smaller winemakers.
they don't bottle, they don'thave bottling lines so they're
like mobile bottling trucks thatwill come during bottling
season or whatever that time is,and they'll just, you know,
pull up to one of these wineriesand bottle all their barrels
(44:42):
and then move on to the next one.
Is there any technology likethat, other than like the
lettuce or the stuff that wejust talked about moving,
because I know, like in the agindustry, there are a lot of
co-ops for certain things, right?
Right Like dairy farms, a lot ofthem co-op, like they sell all
their milk together as a groupto grocers or something like
(45:03):
that.
Can you talk a little bit aboutthat?
I'm just always interested in,like the applications of sharing
and community in differentindustries.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Yeah, yeah, there's one that we've been involved in
recently.
That's not anything superglamorous, but it is an example
of it.
It's not anything superglamorous, but it is an example
of it is there's a push for feed.
The feeds that get fed toanimals are constantly evolving
and there's a mix of byproductsand different ways to feed them,
(45:30):
and one that's been discoveredis that dry, fine ground corn
seems to be one of the betteringredients for high producing
dairy cows.
So there's been a huge push uphere.
Everybody wants fine groundcorn.
It's also logistically easierbecause you can buy and sell dry
corn.
It's a lot harder to buy andsell wet corn because that only
(45:51):
happens in the fall when youharvest it.
So the cost to put in, you knowyou put in this milling system
to generate this, but thereagain it sits for a lot of the
year.
So we've been automating a lotof those mills to run fully
autonomously.
Pretty much lights out.
And then what some of thesepeople are doing is putting in
(46:11):
extra bins where they'll makeproduct for other local farmers
and sell to them, and then oursystem just detects once they
pick up their load it'll refillit and kind of go from there.
So that that's kind of a smallscale way of just.
You know it's usually one tofive at the most.
You know, kind of together.
(46:32):
I don't know that, I don't knowany of them are necessarily
pooling resources to build one.
Some might, but a lot of themit's.
You know I'm going to be theone I'm going to build it, I'm
going to charge you this amountof money type of thing, uh.
And then, as you mentioned, thecooperative thing has been part
of ag forever.
So a lot of the inputs thatfarmers buy the seeds, the
fertilizers and things all comethrough cooperatives.
(46:53):
And then um, dairy, a lot ofthem are in co-ops.
The dairy I grew up on umthere's.
Their milk goes to privateprocessor but there's still a
co-op kind of that they're apart of and that comes back to
actually almost the opposite ofwhat you were talking about.
We're starting to see some of indairy around here.
(47:14):
The past decade or so is peoplestarting to do some of their
own processing, people startingto do some of their own
processing.
If you're near a large metroarea, there's a big demand for
locally produced stuff wherepeople can come out and look at
your cows and so that has helpedsome people that's a much
higher profit margin than youwould get selling it as a
(47:36):
commodity.
Naturally you have a lot ofoverhead in doing that, but that
is something people have done,and the same thing that you
mentioned with the wine growers.
If someone is new and makingtheir own cheese, they'll
sometimes go to a smallercheesemaker and just have them
private label something for them, because the licensing and
regulations is a lot of work anda lot of risk to invest all
(47:59):
that up front.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
Yeah, so I'm going to connect that point back to come
to OT Skatecon, so that you canfind other automation
professionals that you cancollaborate with If there are
things that either you are notbig enough to handle or areas
(48:24):
that are adjacent to things.
You know what are you going tobe talking about at OT Skatecon,
vinny, and why should peoplewant to?
I don't know.
Yeah, what are they going tohear about that?
Maybe they can reach out to youor consider you a resource on
in their business going forward.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
Right, I'm listed as talking about ag automation, so
probably a few of the thingswe've talked about here today,
and of course I have somenatural other things of just how
to navigate the world, oftrying to do your own automation
thing, and a lot of that hasbeen around how to kind of
(49:00):
create your own little marketthat doesn't exist, and uh, of
course people can always ask metechnical questions, but uh, I'm
no, I'm no expert there, I justhave my opinions.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
So it looks like we're about, uh, getting close
to an hour here.
So, allie, whatever, what?
Speaker 2 (49:18):
other questions do you have?
Sure, so when I start I have achemical engineering background
and my first process engineeringjob was growing algae, and so
we got like crazy into like, uh,greenhouse automation, and so
there's just so much um that weused to look at there and then
we would try to grow it withlights and like.
(49:39):
So I know about verticalfarming and like, I guess, have
you gotten into any of thatstuff Like or uh, have you do?
Do any of your currentcustomers experiment, uh with
some of that stuff?
Um, and you know, does thatstuff interest you?
And like, how has it changed?
I guess?
Cause it's been.
It's been like 10 years for mesince I touched greenhouse
automations.
Yeah, and it's been like 10years for me since I touched
(49:59):
greenhouse automations.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
Yeah, and it does in a way.
A lot of that was all you know.
The big push of the verticalstuff was a lot of venture
backed and there's people thenthat were also getting back to
create a system for those and,like we all know, you know if
(50:23):
you can build enough ofsomething.
It's substantially cheaper tobuild a microcontroller of your
own design versus using a PLC.
So it's to hit that price pointfor ag.
But the vertical thing is a bitof a topic in the ag world.
It's a contested topic becausethere's people that see it as
the way of the future andthere's people that see it as
actually incredibly inefficientand unsustainable.
So somewhere in the middle isprobably where that is.
(50:44):
I don't deal with any truevertical farms.
I deal with people that grow inhigh tops and things like that
of greenhouses, but nothing thatis a true thing you see, of a
farm downtown New York City withnothing other than water and
somehow they get all of theirinputs in there and it's better
for the environment.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
Yeah, I think oftentimes there's a lot of like
hidden costs and things likethat.
Like, oh, we're going to save alot on this.
And then you're like, oh, butunintended consequences, now we
have.
It is or negatives or whateverright.
Speaker 3 (51:20):
And even you know in my area land is $20,000 an acre
for decent land and that'sincredibly expensive, but
compared to a vertical farm it'sstill some of the cheapest area
you can grow a crop.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Well, give a plug for well, I don't really have
really the name, but I mightshare something more about it
next time I visit Iceland.
But I have someone in myextended family that I actually
haven't met in person, but he'sthe co-founder of a company
where they're buildingautonomous farms inside of
containers.
In Iceland, our climate, it'svery barren and it's very cold
in the wintertime.
We don't grow a whole lot ofthings other than greenhouse.
(52:04):
We do well with cucumbers andtomatoes and lettuce and a few
other things.
But the idea here is that youcan have a kind of
self-sustaining littleautonomous thing that makes food
in remote local villages andstuff like that that don't have
access to fresh produce,especially not in the winter
time.
We have to, like, import a lotof stuff, uh, and so then it's
(52:25):
not necessarily about costeffectiveness but about access
yeah um.
So I think that that could belike a reasonable application of
something like a verticalfarming or a, you know,
container farming is where youdon't have access to land, um,
or land that has conditions togrow things.
Speaker 3 (52:41):
Yeah, that is a great application for it.
Speaker 1 (52:45):
And then one that I heard about recently and I don't
really know enough about it tosay anything was somebody that
is trying to grow produce incontainers at sea.
Speaker 3 (52:55):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
So that's new, and I don't have much to say about it
other than that's interesting.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
They need the produce , those like squid farmers that
are out there for like two years.
Speaker 3 (53:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
I don't know that they're thinking about putting
it on boats where people are,but rather the farm itself just
being out on the water.
In the water?
I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (53:18):
I don't remember specifically what the reason was
.
They need to grow food on there.
That's a pretty good idea,because they don't let them off
to go get more vegetables, sothey die of B12 poisoning.
No B12 deficiency.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
Well, back in the day it was scurvy.
Speaker 3 (53:33):
It was.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
Holly yesterday was eating a lime.
So she squeezes the lime, shelicks the lime, she drinks the
juice I'm Mexican and then shejust like flipped it open and
just like ate the rest of it.
And we're trying to.
We were just at a conference.
We're trying to prevent gettingsick because we got like
conference season and vitamin Cis a huge thing and I didn't
know until at some point in myadult life that scurvy is
(53:57):
vitamin C deficiency and it wasbecause all these people were
just on a boat for months anddidn't eat anything fresh.
So yeah, one last tangent, Iguess for the fun of the
conversation.
So with that, Vinny, is thereanything that you want to ask or
talk about that we didn't coveror that came to your mind?
Before we do the standard lastquestion and then sign off.
Speaker 3 (54:23):
I think we covered some pretty pretty interesting
topics today cool.
Speaker 1 (54:28):
Then my last question is can you tell us where people
can find you reach out to youif they have any questions?
I projects when I work with youwhere you are your username on
the forums or on Reddit.
No, just kidding.
Yeah, Give us all the thingsthat you want to tell people to
pay attention to and then if youhave anything cool coming up
(54:50):
that we should be looking outfor and we'll make sure to share
.
On Automation Ladies.
Speaker 3 (54:55):
The easiest place is really LinkedIn these days,
probably just my name, and I dotry to keep the company website
updated with some of our recentprojects.
Most of the projects we do areat farms, so we usually don't
have any restrictions on sharinga lot of what we do, which is a
pretty nice spot to be in, yeahthat's huge.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
Yeah, I know a lot of people in other industries are
envious of that because they'relike I do a lot of cool stuff
but it's under nda yeah, yeah,that's a.
Speaker 3 (55:28):
It's not a big thing we run into.
We do have some, but it's not alot.
So that's that's the best placeto try to try to keep those
areas updated as much as aspossible.
Speaker 2 (55:38):
Um what kind of industries do care about that?
Or what type of um farmers docare about hiding some of that?
Um, not a lot like where's thehighest tech stuff going on in
ag?
Speaker 3 (55:55):
there's nothing.
There's nothing that fancygoing on.
Uh, there is no, nobody'scalled me to be a part of it, at
least.
Um, so no, there, I mean thereis.
You know, naturally, if you dosome work for some multinational
oems which would do somesupport with some of them, um,
it's just kind of their standardpractice.
So that's the only time wereally run into it at the farm
(56:16):
side, I mean, if I don't know ifanyone comes.
It seems like an ag in a lot ofag situations that I've had, if
someone comes up to with doingthe true more industrial
integration stuff, just notsomething we ever get involved
(56:45):
with, because ours is right atthe right at the customer's side
and kind of customized for them.
We're not developing some fancyautonomous robot type stuff.
Speaker 1 (56:55):
Okay, yeah, all right .
Well, thank you so much forcoming on the show.
People can connect with Vinnybecause you probably found out
about this episode on LinkedInor if you're listening in your
car through and you got it, youknow, from iTunes or whatever.
You can head over toautomationladiesio If you want
to connect with Vinny.
We'll have a link to hisLinkedIn profile and we'll try
to feel free to keep in touchand update.
(57:16):
If you have any future projectsor links that you want to
publicize, we can put them onyour profile to keep that up to
date.
And, yeah, this was a lot offun.
Thank you so much for chattingwith us and we look forward to
seeing you in July.
And then, anytime you have likea super cool application that
you are allowed to share, feelfree to hit us up so that we can
share that with our audience,cause, especially like videos of
(57:38):
anything getting made that weall eat, I think, like all of us
nerds would love to see that.
Speaker 3 (57:43):
So absolutely thanks for having me all right, thank
you.
Speaker 1 (57:47):
Have a great rest of your day.
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