We have combined IT background experience of close to 50 years (scary when looked at that way), with my more recent years spent doing software development. Lee has an engineering background combined with current Cyber Security knowledge and experience. We’ve found this to be a great combination when it comes to troubleshooting and lateral thinking around problems and we tend to approach things from different angles.
I (Peter) also have many years of experience in Financial Market data and the challenges associated with working with large datasets and all the fun commercial licensing etc… that does along with it. Licensing and charging for data is going to come to this sector as soon as people start to realise the value of it and which point things get “interesting”.
Right now, I am keeping a cultivation diary and trying to document our strains, but the big problem is that the strain names provided by suppliers do not reflect the true genetics, mostly. Unless you have DNA testing, you do not know what you really have.
We’ve both been keen growers for a number of years, from chillies through to herbs either in greenhouses or using indoor hydroponic setups. The hydroponic setup requiring much closer monitoring and control, Lee is a die hard hydroton clay grower and I’m more soil or coco based for my grows.
What got us into starting the business was a need for a way to keep an eye on things whilst on holiday and not coming home to a room/greenhouse full of dead plants. So we took a look at what was on the market and realised it was far to expensive and did not have the functionality we were looking for. With our tech backgrounds we decided to build our solution and were soon getting requests for units when we started posting pictures of what we were building.
@Fdousty, what you have described is an all-too-common problem in the cultivation world. Organizations like @strainly.io, Medicinal Genomics (@BenMGC), Open Cannabis Project, and Phylos are all working to solve this issue with precise genetic mapping and sequencing.
You raise a very good point, which is why partnering with the right source is so important and thankfully there are companies such as @Strainly who are working on resolving this challenge.
We are currently working on implementing a journal function into the platform so that you can have your environment data automatically logged with your journal entries. This additional meta data combined with the environment data will ideally be used to produce templates/models for growing which can be shared within the community and improved on over time.
Correct the equipment is very affordable, we want to ask customers “How many sensors do you want?” not “How many sensors can you afford?” the hive-mind of data is slowly being built up at the moment but with each new client that process gains momentum.
Once we reach the mass of data we need then we will start to introduce some of the more advanced analytical and predictive functions.
It’s a beautiful day in the AMA neighborhood, folks!
Hey, GNET @memberdirectory, c’mon over and join the party! We have another great discussion happening with Pete and Lee from P&L Grow Systems here at our AMA.
I believe some growers have a need to be in total control. Reliance on technology can be like relinquishing a degree of that control. The ironic part of this is that technology actually gives the grower a much greater degree of control.
I also think there may be some fear of security issues.
One comment we get from a number of clients is that since starting to use our platform they actually spend more time looking at what is going on as they are able to do so from anywhere now and not just when they are physically in the room.
All of the data is stored in a secure and encrypted database with the data anonymised. We have designed the system to be distributed so it can be scaled up and down as required and minimises any impact from outages. We conduct a minimum of an annual penetration test and security review to ensure we are not exposed, with ongoing monitoring and review of the platform.
The devices are also designed to prevent them being tampered with and there is no direct communication with the actual units themselves. They all connect outbound from a clients network with no inbound traffic, so there is no need for clients to make alterations to firewall and the like to allow access to the platform.
Coming from a financial services IT background we both take security very seriously.
Our up and coming controller unit offers that functionality and has been used by early adopters here for the past 18 to 24 months as we develop it further. We are currently able to control the following:
Completely agree with you there, the big challenge from our side was making it both secure and usable (not always possible). Highly secure systems are great but can be pain to operate and very expensive, completely open systems are dead easy to use but come with inherent risks due to the lack of security.
We think we’ve found a happy balance between the two, the right level of security along with keeping it simple and easy to use. We’ve reduced the amount of information we need to know about a user down to just a username and email address (username to login with and email address to receive alerts to), this minimises any exposure to our clients as there is no personal information held on our systems. The joys of GDPR/NYDFS!
Lee’s experience and contacts within the cyber security field has allowed us to evaluate the security on a risk based approach.
