IntelliCulture's vision is to empower farms to grow their operations into sustainable and profitable businesses. We are pleased to share a guest article, from Jesse Klok of Southern Ag Ltd., reviewing his experience with IntelliCulture.
IntelliCulture Review - Perspectives from the Field
If you are looking for a product that is both easy to use, has great service and gives quality information, you will find yourself at the doorstep of IntelliCulture. Recently we partnered with IntelliCulture to demo their canplug loggers on our combines on a broad acre Irrigation and Dryland farm in Southern Alberta.
So we began…
With more tech coming into Agriculture there can be a feeling of “this needs to work or it's getting unplugged”. And not going to lie, that's the feeling I had when I got the box. These loggers were going into 2 2019 8.90 New Holland Combines. It was pretty easy to find the canplug hub in the cab with it being to the right of the operator's seat, in the corner post. The box had well written instructions for the plugs, multiple ends for different machine types and the logger was small enough that it tucked into the corner of the cab where it wasn’t a bother for the operator. I do have to say one issue that I did encounter on the 8.90 New Holland was the positioning of the canplug near the fuse box. I had to undo the canplug from the metal bracket inside the fuse panel area and push the logger down below the fuse box so it didn’t interrupt anything going on electrically. Other than that, it's a straightforward procedure. Once everything was installed and secured, we made one phone call to the office and had data appearing in the app in minutes. 24 hours later we were getting daily reports. The reports we were sent had the acres and hours each machine had done and a coverage map of where the combines had worked the previous day. Impressive for tech to be that easy and service to be right there getting us going. I should note there is some pre-install work that did need to be done like sending over Farm names, Field Boundaries and machine types to IntelliCulture before logging can start.
One of the reasons for wanting to demo these loggers was figuring out a digital way to not only know where the combines were and what acres they were doing on a daily basis, but also record and get notified when servicing needed to be done. Having the ability to have notifications when different machines hit set hours helped us figure out when machines needed different services. This can either be setup through the ShopView tab (you can click here to check it out) on the website or directly in the field on the app. Another feature available in ShopView is viewing engine fault codes for each machine. Fortunately, we didn’t have any codes come up, but just being able to read the code, figure out the issues and know if a tech needed to come out, would be a huge time saver. And let's be honest, when it's go time there isn’t a lot of “let’s wait around for a tech to show up” patience...
I’m generally hauling grain back to the bin yard during harvest, so while we demoed the loggers I used the CabView tab on the app (check it out here). There, I used the location, coverage and the average yield to figure out how much bin space we would need for the rest of the field. Ya, I could radio and ask both combines how many acres they had done and what the average yield was, but honestly just a quick “what's the average yield?” just made life easier.
So what’s next…
There are a lot of uses for these loggers. From seeded acre reports, digital record of seeding dates, coverage maps from the sprayer so you know nothing is missed to having a location of the trucks hauling grain. At the end of the day though, it’s all data. And if the data is there and it’s quick and simple, why not plug a couple in and see for yourself what the IntelliCulture system can do to make your life easier on your farm.
If your wanting more information on the loggers or have any questions take a look at the website at www.intelliculture.ca or if your ready to take the next jump in getting more data that’s quick and easy to install give them a call at 1-289-404-2653 or email at: contact@intelliculture.com