Owner: Tony Purdom
Startup date: Jan. 5
Address: 312 S. Mary Ave., East Wenatchee
Phone: 509-393-9962
If things go well for Tony Purdom, he will see his new company's main product driven almost to the ground. Repeatedly.
Purdom is the founder of WiDAQ Systems, a company that sells wireless field sensors that measure humidity and temperature. To work best, these sensors have to be installed a foot or two above ground level.
While Purdom did not invent the sensors, he started selling them Jan. 5 and providing technical support and data storage to those--mostly farmers and orchardists--who buy and use them.
The purpose of WiDAQ, which stands for Wireless Data Acquisition, ("DAQ is an old term for data acquisition," he said. "It's not a typo.") is to provide high-resolution data in the field to farmers and orchardists, Purdom said.
"They can monitor the temperature and make decisions based on that," he said. "The data can also be used for spray records, recording the temperatures during the days they were spraying, and calculating when to spray for certain pests."
Purdom said the equipment is suited for all sorts of farming but it is most useful in large fields, as it makes what otherwise would be a time-consuming data collection process, much quicker, more accurate and streamlined.
"For instance, during a frost, you got your whole orchard crew checking temperatures," he said.
With the sensors, which are about the size of a carton of eggs, all that work is handled by the equipment and it's accomplished in a matter of seconds.
"It allows you to see better what goes on throughout the site," he said.
The data gathered by the WiDAQ sensors includes air and soil temperatures, both highs and lows, vibration, pressure and motion.
This data is driven through a watertight repeater unit the size of a small briefcase to a computer gateway. Each repeater can transfer information from up to 26 sensors and each computer gateway can gather the information from up to 100 sensors and 14,000 events, according to WiDAQ's Web site.
While the sensors have a 1-mile range, the repeaters have a 7-mile range, Purdom said.
The repeaters create an invisible "mesh," a wireless network of signals and connections, which covers more ground. This makes the data more thorough and drives it faster to the gateway.
This data can then be sent to a grower's computer, according to WiDAQ's Web site, and all the data from all the sensors are hosted in a password-protected server operated and maintained by WiDAQ.
The sensors were developed and are manufactured by Point Six Wireless, a company out of Kentucky. Sensors cost about $300 and the repeaters cost about $400.
These costs will come down as the technology becomes more prevalent, Purdom said.
Purdom, who now lives in East Wenatchee, grew up in Omak.
He first studied computer programming in 1991 when he attended Communication Specialist School while stationed in Petaluma, Calif., with the Coast Guard. He was in the Coast Guard until 1993.
Since then he has been a member of the Air National Guard, attended Central Washington University and has held a handful of computer-related jobs including stints as a software programmer at Duke Engineering in Wenatchee, a software development company, and two years as network administrator for the Washington State Apple Commission.
During this time working in different computer related jobs was when he first came across a system that was used to gather temperature data on the fields.
The first tries he saw did not work really well, as they mainly consisted of one router inside an office gathering all the data. He started researching wireless sensors and came across Point Six's product and applied the "mesh" idea and more sensors were added.
Now, he said, "there are no major issues, the technology is solid on both ends."
Purdom, working out of his home and with no employees, said he may one day need an office for additional technicians, but for now the company is running efficiently the way it is.
The need for a staff or an office will depend on how much business the company has, he said.
Purdom said that while he has not made any money on sales of the systems, there has been "a lot of interest in the system." A handful of entities, including farms and irrigation districts have approached him, he said.
Overhead costs are running close to $1,000 per month, which includes his Internet connection, server lease and electricity, among others. The initial self-funded investment to start the company ran close to $6,000,
Numbers aside, the biggest challenge is educating the grower on the technology, which he said is just emerging.
In five years, Purdom hopes to see the hardware become less expensive, making it more cost-effective for growers to install more sensors and have what he calls "higher-resolution data," a sharper overview of what is happening in a field.
He also sees the temperature sensors being used in warehouse floors, or by wine grape producers.
"Once people understand how reliable this is, this is going to explode," he said. "There will be applications for it we haven't even thought of."
No comments:
Post a Comment