Why video telematics the next step in tackling driver distraction
If there’s an occupation not noted for leaving you with an abundance of leisure time, it’s farming.
Nowhere is this truer than Australia, where the average annually cropped area per farm is just over 800 hectares (or if you prefer around 800 rugby fields). At the bigger end of the scale, there are around 100 farms that can each claim to be twice the size of the ACT. Just the act of driving from one end of the property to another can take hours, even half a day.
Management on this scale can be challenging, which makes agriculture a sector that really benefits from the emerging Internet of Things (IOT). Using internet-enabled sensors and other devices, you can automate processes, gather intelligence and be alerted the moment issues arise. Eliminating the need to physically travel around large property as often is an obvious efficiency, but better visibility over the entire operation improves decision-making and highlights wastage.
One of the biggest barriers to the wider adoption of smarter equipment has been cost. Many agricultural telematics solutions rely on differential GPS, which uses ground based reference stations in conjunction with satellites to triangulate location. The resulting information is very accurate, up to 10cm, but it is also expensive.
The solution to this is to assess whether your scenarios are ones where that sort of precision is even needed. For most agricultural applications, standard GPS is accurate enough to provide insight at a much lower cost. Once you’ve, say, narrowed down a piece of malfunctioning equipment to a particular field, it’s enough information to act on.
Integrating an asset management system that gives you connectivity in remote areas with smart devices gives you the tools you need to make your life easier, without having to bet the farm on the investment.
1. Monitoring
If the pump flooding a cotton field stops working and it’s half a day before anyone notices, the losses can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. With such high stakes, it’s no wonder many operations have someone constantly travelling the farm, checking on them. Pumps equipped with tracking units measure engine hours so you know they’re working, while flow switches will send the alert if water supply is interrupted, by blockage or other issue. With tracker-equipped vehicles, the path of their fertiliser-spreading tractors can be mapped to ensure that fields aren’t being under- or over-fertilised.
2. Feed Tracking
Bringing live animals into the equation creates an even more acute need for insight. Using geofences to create virtual borders around the feed stations and water tanks serviced by each vehicle, means you can measure how long and how often a given vehicle was there. It also means you are not waiting for someone to discover an issue before you deal with it. Flow metres or level sensors keep a virtual eye on your water tanks, sending out alerts when they’re critically low and your animals risk dehydration.
3. Land Management
Agriculture is increasingly relying on geospatial data to make decisions about land management. Map data can be overlayed with other information generated from telematics and GPS tracking devices to create a dashboard of information about the farm. This means you can determine at a glance where each paddock is in its use cycle. You know instantly how frequently a paddock has been used, and whether it’s due for fertilisation or rotation of crops or grazing livestock to allow the grass to regrow or soil to replenish.
4. Fuel Use
Remote locations and other logistics means that a heavy vehicle that runs short of petrol can’t just pop to the servo to refuel. You fill your onsite tank at a wholesale rate, but if supply is unexpectedly exhausted before the end of a harvest, you face lost time and an inflated price to refuel at short notice. With level sensors that alert farm managers when tanks are at a certain level, you can avoid being caught short. Can also reduce fuel attrition. Instead of the honour system, in which sub-contractors make note in a log book every time they fill up their equipment from your tank, a PIN or RFID card identifies the operator, and then level sensors determine accurate fuel use for invoicing.
5. Maintenance
As well as alerting you when there’s a problem, telematics software lets you track which machines are due for a service, ensuring they are always running efficiently and that a worn part is replaced before it increases wear and tear.
With the ability to automate and understand your business better, agriculture businesses can use telematics and integrated products to improve their operations. The only question that remains is what to do with all that newfound time.