Aaron farms with his dad Irvin and brother Michael on the operation his great-grandpa started. Grain monitoring is key to their operation – with 4,000 acres of production, it has to be. They were using StorMax, wanted to step up to an automated system but didn’t want to spend a lot upgrading bins they may not be keeping long-term.
When they saw OPI’s new Blue Lite system, they knew they had their solution.
“I’m not sure if we’re going to keep these or sell and invest in larger, flat-bottom bins, but I was looking for a better way to store data,” says Aaron. “Blue Lite is handheld; you just plug it in, and it uploads—very convenient.”
Blue Lite Benefits
Beyond the convenient uploads in your hand, Aaron points out that ease comes standard with Blue Lite. From setup to daily use, it provided the simple, economical solution they needed.
“I thought there would be more phone and device issues,” he says. “You turn it on, hit Bluetooth; it connects, and it’s done. It does everything automatically—you don’t have to do anything.”
For an operation that had Dad traveling from bin site to bin site with notepad and pen, Blue Lite pushed them light years ahead in just a few days.
“The fact that we can all go onto the app and see the status is great. We can access it everywhere and see the data—and not have to write it all down,” Aaron says.
Other benefits come with links and with the ability to stretch to the far corners of their operation. “We can daisy chain the bins so you can just plug it in once, which was a huge benefit for us,” he explains. “It works great for our most remote bins too. We can just plug it in and work off of the phone and 5G, so it’s really nice to be able to have that in an area we normally wouldn’t have connection.”
More OPI on the Horizon?
“The ultimate goal is to eventually have self-monitoring systems on the bins,” says Aaron. “We’re still expanding, so we aren’t set up for it yet. But every new bin we get has the OPI Blue cables on it. It just needs the diodes.”
Still for now, Blue Lite delivers exactly what the Foys need “This is definitely the step up from StorMax that we were looking for,” he says. “This uploads the information and gives us the ability for three sets of eyes to be checking it, instead of Dad going from bin to bin and writing it down.”
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