Farm equipment without cellular
A multi-hop mesh between tractors, combines, carts, field sensors, and crew phones across acres the coverage map gave up on. Machines carry the data home, sensors need no SIM, and your farm platform finally sees every acre.
A soil probe reading travels over an offline farm mesh network, relayed by a combine and a grain cart to the farmhouse gateway dashboard with no SIM, no cellular, and no tower.
A soil probe's reading rides the combine and the grain cart to the farmhouse gateway with no SIM and no tower.
Precision agriculture assumes signal the countryside does not have
Coverage maps and fields disagree. Precision agriculture platforms assume LTE. The back forty, the valley floor, and the far side of the hill say otherwise, and those are the acres where decisions matter.
Machines carry the data. A probe advertises its readings. Whatever passes within range picks them up and syncs them at the yard, so every pass of the field is a data run.
Your platform stays the system of record. The mesh gets the data to the platform you already run, from fields it could not previously reach. Nothing here replaces it.
What a sensor costs to connect
Sensors get cheaper every year. Backhaul does not.
What you can build
Each of these runs on the shipped SDK primitives.
A soil probe advertises its readings over BLE. Any machine that passes within range invokes it, carries the payload, and syncs it at the yard.
Combines, grain carts, and trucks route task changes and equipment status machine to machine, relaying up to 8 hops, with no tower in the loop.
Opt-in telemetry buffers yield, application, and diagnostics through every disconnected pass, then flushes to your farm platform in order at the yard.
How an evaluation runs
- Integrate
- The SDK goes onto cab devices, crew phones, and a farmhouse gateway. Devices join the mesh and authenticate with operation-provisioned OfflineIDs.
- Exercise
- A defined offline scenario on your acres: sensor reads, machine coordination, and crew messaging running mesh-only across fields with no coverage.
- Measure
- Success criteria agreed before week one, evaluated against the opt-in telemetry record: delivery rates, sensor coverage, sync completeness at the yard.
- Timeline
- 4 to 16 weeks, scoped up front, no open-ended commitments.
The primitives behind it
- DORS
- Machine movement is the transport. Readings are advertised, picked up by whatever passes, and synced at the yard. How mesh networking works.
- Service discovery
- A soil probe exposes its readings as a discoverable service that any machine within 8 hops invokes request and response. How service discovery works.
- Telemetry
- The operational record buffers on-device through every disconnected pass and flushes to your platform in order. How telemetry works.
- OfflineID
- Machines, gateways, and crew phones verify each other device to device, and crew messaging is MLS-encrypted. How offline identity works.
- After the field
- The same stack keeps trucks and grain haulers coordinating once the harvest leaves the field.
Agriculture FAQ
How do you connect farm equipment without cellular coverage?
With a device-to-device mesh instead of a tower. DORS links tractors, combines, carts, and crew phones over BLE and WiFi Direct with multi-hop relay up to 8 hops, so machines coordinate in-field and data rides along with equipment until it reaches the yard gateway.
What hardware does the mesh need on a farm?
The phones and tablets already in the cab. The SDK ships as a React Native binding over a Rust core, so it runs on the devices operators carry, and on any gateway or equipment compute that can run the Rust core.
How do field sensors reach the farmhouse without cellular?
Machines carry the data. A sensor advertises its readings over BLE, any equipment that passes within range invokes and stores them, and the payload syncs when that machine reaches the yard. Chunked transfer handles up to 100 MiB per payload.
Does every sensor need a SIM or a LoRa gateway?
No. Sensors join the mesh over BLE, and battery-aware relay keeps their power draw in check. The connectivity line item per device, the SIM, the subscription, the gateway tower, is what the mesh removes.
Does this work with our existing farm management platform?
The SDK is TypeScript over a Rust core, and telemetry, if you turn it on, is uploaded by the SDK itself. Your existing platform stays the system of record; the mesh gets the data to it from fields it could not previously reach.
How far can the mesh reach across open fields?
Routing is multi-hop up to 8 hops, so reach grows with every machine, sensor, and phone in the operation. Equipment movement extends it further: a machine that passes a sensor carries its data the rest of the way.
How does an evaluation work?
A 4 to 16 week scoped evaluation against your operation, your acres, and success criteria we agree up front. Contact us to scope it.
