In prior posts, we’ve jumped into why cannabis is so critical for medical purposes. We also discussed what we can do about helping the industry. Now we’re going to focus on how we’re going to accomplish that objective.
Technology challenges
Over the past 2 decades, Internet of Things (IoT) solutions have proliferated across many industries. Somehow, cannabis was left substantially behind. IoT solutions integrate a massive number of sensors (generally low cost and long-lived) and tightly integrate them with operational monitors and controls. Let’s break that problem down into three components: sensors, controllers, and integration.
Sensors prices have been dropping over the past decade – but not for growers. For example, the accepted room environment monitor frequently costs a few hundred dollars (which is completely out of line with industrial trends). Separately, controllers (e.g., actuators and solenoids) have also experienced significant price drops. Unfortunately, hydroponic and HVAC controllers are still exceedingly expensive. Lastly, most vendors provide either hardware or application software. Very few can provide a seamlessly integrated experience.
An optimal solution requires a fresh perspective. The starting point should not be shaving a few dollars off of a $500 room sensor or a $750 solenoid. We need to start with leveraging cost-effective sensors and controllers. Beyond the hardware, the most critical part is the integration. For cannabis growers, that integration needs to include hardware, software, user experience and grower expertise. With the grower and their plants at the center of the design, sensor data and controller automation will remove their pain points.
Solutions start with people
To build a fresh solution, the most critical people to include are the people experiencing the problem. In this case, you need to start with direct involvement with growers that keep their hands on plants. They can provide real data on real problems. The grower’s perspective needs to be coupled with experienced technologists. While technologists that have been steeped in horticulture are helpful, we’ve found that the technology team will benefit from tapping their extremely broad experiences to help break established patterns. Those varied experiences will provide fresh perspectives for experimental solutions.
As that technical team starts to build solutions, their experiments need to focus on native integrations that link directly to grower’s pain points. By demonstrating solutions to growers quickly, they will ensure it’s meeting their needs rather than wandering in the technology jungle. If it doesn’t accomplish the grower’s objective, isn’t cost effective, fails to integrate easily, or isn’t sustainable, the approach can be discarded so the team can start the next experiment.
The integration of user experience and analytics are the ultimate “game changer”. Let’s face it, a grower won’t relish digging through millions of rows of data from sensors to determine if there’s a problem lurking somewhere in one of their rooms. By applying analytic principles, the system can automatically address issues and issue alerts for problems it can’t address. By keeping the grower in mind, you can design a solution that fits on their phone and helps them focus on only their most critical exceptions at the facility, room, or plant level.
Our key belief is the importance of growers. Many evolving AI solutions are focused on displacing the grower. Our focus is to listen to and involve the growers. By helping them refine and automate their best practices, we feel they will increase their yields faster with less risk. As with most industries, there’s a place for AI. However, the complex ecosystem required to grow plants will require years to fully manage. Why accept the higher risk and defer the rewards?
Pushing forward: plants and growers are the center of everything
How will I maintain my focus going forward? That’s easy to answer. It’s all about the grower and their plants. The hardware, software, integration methods, analytics and mobile technology are all fascinating areas. However, they only have context and meaning when the grower and plants are at the center of it. I’ll be maintaining a singular focus on their success. That’s going to require lots of connections, conversations, feedback and solution experiments.
You can find the results of those discussions on our “Grower’s Corner”. That series will focus on specific problems and how we address them. Check out our articles on that thread and join the discussion.
