Sam Bibby UW Extension
Open-source software is a software product for which the code is freely available to the public to use or modify. It is essentially the opposite from proprietary software, which is privately owned and licensed. Open-source software may sound like something that would only be useful to an IT specialist or computer software engineer, but it is relevant to many in the agriculture industry, especially farmers. Open-source software is usually developed by a group of people who have a mutual interest in creating a software product that fits their specific needs and often avoids the high cost of similar pay-to-use products.
Many programs and software products are open-sourced; Android, the world's most popular mobile operating system is open-source software. The web browser Firefox, the computer operating system Linux, and the programming language Python are all more examples of open-source software used by millions of people. While open-source software projects have been popular in the computer science world since the 1990s, there has been little interest in projects related to agriculture until quite recently.
As more farmers have now grown up in the age of computers and software development, there is an increase in open-source projects related to agriculture. Many of those projects aim to develop technology that doesn't currently exist, avoid the high cost of existing proprietary technology or fit a specific need not catered to by larger for-profit companies.
One of the most popular projects with tech-savvy farmers is Ag Open GPS. Ag Open GPS is a project started by Brian Tischler from Alberta, Canada. The project aims to provide an inexpensive auto-steer solution for farmers with all the functionality one might find in current branded products. The software is completely free; it only requires a generic GPS antenna, receiver and Windows tablet to run as a conventional lightbar with a coverage map.
The setup will achieve pass-to-pass accuracy of less than 1.5 meters. Adding RTK corrections via NTRIP or a radio base station will allow for less than one centimeter accuracy. Adding a circuit control board and a few other components allows for auto-steer functionality with the same accuracy. Additional functions include section control, automatic implement lift and more in development.
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Farm management software is also a growing sector of agriculture technology and has a well-developed open-source software option called Farm OS. The application is designed for farmers and farm workers to easily access and record farm operations. Farm OS operates as a web application, which means it must be hosted on a server of one's own, or the customer must pay some small annual fee to host it on another server. The advantage to it being a web app and not a static Excel document means farmers can integrate sensors and real-time data logging into the application.
Web Open Drone Map -- ODM -- is an open-source software that makes combining individual drone images to form larger high resolution orthomosaic images for analysis, easy and available for anyone. Commercial options for the same process can cost more than $1,000 per year for a subscription. Web ODM can analyze an image with plant health indicators such as NDVI, LAI and many more.
Open Weed Locator is a project started by doctoral student Guy Coleman to detect and spray individual weeds in a fallow field environment. All software and hardware design plans are freely available. In-crop weed detection is currently in development.
Drones are one of the hottest topics in agriculture, and many of them are flying with a software that is adapted from one of the most successful open-source projects. ArduPilot is a drone or UAV fight control software. ArduPilot has been around a long time and did not start as an ag-related project. Currently many drones built for commercial and hobby use are utilizing the ArduPilot software in some way.
While many of the projects lack the customer support and user-friendliness of a commercial product, if one is a tech-savvy farmer, or has tech-savvy kids, the cost and functionality may be worth it. As a bonus, farmers won't be stuck paying or waiting for service because they will likely be stuck doing any fixing themselves.
Disclaimer: Any use of trade names is for descriptive purposes and does not represent an endorsement by the author. None of the products mentioned here have been evaluated or are endorsed by UW-Madison.
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