Sens-Alert Tells Growers When Hay Is Ready To Bale

Sens-Alert Tells Growers When Hay Is Ready To Bale BALERS Balers 27-3-39 Western hay producers must often wait for dew to dampen alfalfa crops in order to minimize losses during baling. "My sister owns an alfalfa ranch in Oregon, and she would sleep in her pickup in the field so she'd know when the dew was heavy enough that she could bale," says Martin Lilly, Goleta, California. Lilly figured his sister and other alfalfa growers could get a decent night's sleep if he could put moisture sensors in their hay fields that would alert them when conditions were right for baling. He happened to work for a company, Dynason, Inc., that makes various electronic sensing devices. After several years of work, Lilly came up with a product called Sens-Alert, which can reliably detect dewfall and send a message on a mobile radio, cell phone or pager. Lilly says each of his Sens-Alert systems is custom built for the owner. "In addition to alerting the hay producer that field conditions are right for baling, we can design the system so that the producer can dial up the system on his cell phone and get a report on current field conditions. And we can add a feature that allows him to use his phone to switch on a beacon on the unit, so he can easily find it when he arrives at the field in the middle of the night to begin baling. This one is important because some people have been known to lose track of where they placed the unit," he says. While Sens-Alert was designed for Western hay growers, Lilly says he can adapt the units to monitor temperatures in fields (needed to track development of certain pest insects), soil moisture conditions, moisture and temperature in stored grain, and more. "We can equip them with motion sensors to detect intruders and then notify farmers or law enforcement officials," he says. He says a possible application would be to monitor grain moisture in batch drying bins, enabling producers to know exactly when grain can be moved to storage and the bin can be refilled. Another application he's recently worked on is in conjunction with a switch on a gate, so if the gate is opened without authorization, the system calls the farmer and the sheriff's office. "This was designed by a hay grower who was having problems with theft of baled hay," he says. "I've been approached to design a system that will notify dairymen when their hay has wilted enough to chop for haylage," he says. "I haven't had time to find the right sensors and test them for this, but it is possible." Price for a Sens-Alert system varies according to the application and the different bells and whistles incorporated into it. However, a system with notification by cell phone usually costs between $1,500 and $2,000. A typical system weighs less than 20 lbs. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Martin Lilly, Dynasen Inc., 20 Arnold Place, Goleta, Calif. 93117 (ph 805 964-4410; fax 805 967-2824; email: dynasen@concentric.net; website: www.dynasen.com).

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