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London, UK, 29 November 2011: A dozen British farmers have developed a real life version of Angry Birds – a smartphone controlled scarecrow – with the help of T-Mobile. The smartphone app idea, developed by a panel of ...
London, UK, 29 November 2011: A dozen British farmers have developed a real life version of Angry Birds – a smartphone controlled scarecrow – with the help of T-Mobile.
The smartphone app idea, developed by a panel of farmers at a T-Mobile brainstorm, allows users to control scarecrow movements using a smartphone’s 3G connection. The app also provides live-feeds from night-vision cameras located in the scarecrow’s eyes, helping farmers track nuisance birds by day and monitor for livestock rustlers by night.
The Real Angry Birds app was just one idea developed by farmers during a brainstorm, facilitated by a leading app developer to create the ultimate smartphone “agri-app”. Other app ideas include spraying a QR code on a cow so farmers can check its provenance and vaccination history using a smartphone. This idea was actually put into practice on the day in real life. The QR code applied to the cow links to this page: http://bit.ly/vt7qXK (please see further images in notes to editors).
The brainstorm was hosted after T-Mobile spotted its business customers in the farming industry increasingly adopting smartphones. The aim of the day was to raise awareness of the benefits smartphone technology can bring small businesses owners, such as farmers. It also helped highlight to mobile app developers – and those supplying the agriculture industry – how farmers are ready to embrace mobile technology which helps improve productivity and efficiency. The best apps from the day will now be taken forward and pitched to agriculture technology businesses.
Other smartphone agri-apps developed by farmers during the brainstorm – as detailed in T-Mobile’s Smartphone Apps for Farmers whitepaper – include:
1. Anti-rustling app – with sheep costing £1,000 each and pure breeds virtually irreplaceable, sheep and livestock rustling is a big problem for farmers. One farmer at the brainstorm recently lost 50 sheep at a cost of £50,000. This app, inspired by the 2008 film, The Dark Knight, links to a central camera located on a pole in the livestock field. The infrared camera identifies each animal by their heat signal. It sends push alerts to the farmer’s phone if the number of heat signals decreases. It also uploads this data to a central site, alerting other farmers in the area to potential rustling.
2. Real-time farm management app – using the smartphone’s GPS function, farmers can plot their land – they identify the area they want to calculate and physically go to each corner and take a GPS reading. From here, the farmer then calculates the approximate harvest size based on the choice of crops, which links to real-time index prices via 3G. The app would layer different information on their maps such as livestock in each field, track their movements and automatically upload this data to the Rural Payments Agency to cut red tape (it currently has to be done manually).
3. QR code cow app – farmers can tag their cattle with chips to identify them. However, the scanning equipment costs £1,500 each. Instead, farmer would brand their cows with unique QR codes which, when scanned, would link people to the cow’s personalised webpage which includes its age, inoculation history, breed, etc. Any free QR code scanner app would work with the code which reduces costs for farmers.
4. Disease management app – farmers take photos of arable crop diseases on their smartphones, the app then uses visual search to automatically identify the disease. The app matches disease identifiers such as. specks on crop leaves to identify alternaria canker. Once the disease is identified, experts can provide live advice via a video link, removing the need for expensive callout fees.
5. Health and safety app – employees on the farm install this location-aware-app so when they use dangerous equipment, it lets them know if they are trained to use it. The app links to the individual employee’s health and safety records, which are stored in the cloud. In an emergency, the app can shut down the equipment and call the emergency services with voice control.
6. Flying sheepdog drone app – farmers will be able to supplement their sheepdogs with flying drones they control with smartphones. A video feed on the phone will allow farmers to see what the drone sees and control their flocks of sheepremotely.
Martin Stiven, Vice President of Business, T-Mobile, said: “With farmers being one of our most important customers, we were keen to find out how mobile technology could really supercharge their business. People frequently talk about small business owners being wedded to their smartphones but overlook that farmers are micro businesses in their own right, often adopting mobile technology well ahead of the field.
“According to research in America, 94% of farmers now own a smartphone . It’s a trend we’re starting to see amongst British farmers as they look at how mobile technology can cost effectively increase productivity and boost efficiencies.”
Sessions such as these have led T-Mobile to develop the first mobile phone plan designed for micro businesses, like farmers. The plan features a free smartphone on a 12 month business mobile phone plan and ruggedised smartphone cases, protecting phones from the rigours of a farm environment.
Ed Shires, a 24 year old farmer from Buckinghamshire, attended the brainstorm. He said: “The brainstorm brought up some exciting smartphone app ideas that could really help farmers. The most interesting thing for me is how this technology can help cut costs. Some of the farming technology you need can easily run into the thousands. Why spend that sort of money when a 69p smartphone app could achieve similar results?”
Martin Stiven, Vice President of Business for T-Mobile, concluded: “If mobile developers are as excited as we are by these apps, we predict they’ll be available to download by the end of 2012.”
The National Farmers Union (NFU) and EBLEX, the organisation for the English beef and sheep industry, also took part in the brainstorm.
T-Mobile’s new 12 month business tariff is available through its retail stores, telesales (0845 412 3040) and online: www.t-mobile.co.
3. World first: T-Mobile sprayed a QR code on a cow to promote smartphone usage in the agriculture industry (with T-Mobile branding)
Smartphone models such as the HTC Sensation, HTC Wildfire S, iPhone 3GS, BlackBerry 9360 and BlackBerry 9860 are all included free of charge within the price plans.
The £25, £30 and £35 plans have an allowance of 100MB, 100MB and 250MB respectively, and then go onto a rate of 50p per MB used (up to a cap of £1 a day). The £40 and £45 plans have a fair use policy of 500MB and 1GB a month respectively.
T-Mobile UK, along with Orange UK, is part of Everything Everywhere Limited, which serves almost 28 million people and is the UK’s biggest mobile communications company. Owned jointly by Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom, Everything Everywhere plans to transform the industry by giving customers instant access to everything everywhere, offering the best value, best choice and best network experience in the country.