 I'm John Nowacki, NDSU Ag Machine Re-Specialist, and today I'm going to talk about a new kind of precision ag technology called Lora1. Lora1 technology is a way of sensing information in a long distance. Lora means low power, long range network. So you can put sensors out in the field and have a transmitter there with it running on just batteries, and the batteries will be enough power to run for maybe two years. And then within five to seven miles in rural areas, you have a receiver. It's called a gateway antenna, and that antenna then is connected, needs to be connected to the internet. So you can access the data anywhere in the world as long as you have access to the internet. And no license is required, so this is a frequency that's not regulated by the Federal Communication, the FCC. Basically, the cost is for the equipment, but there's no cost to operate it. Once you get it set up, there's no cost involved. The equipment requires the sensors in the field and that one gateway wherever you have access to the internet and electricity. Some examples of the sensors, I've got one set up here. It has temperature sensor, soil moisture sensor, soil temperature, relative humidity. It measures rain, it measures wind speed, wind direction. This one also measures CO2, carbon dioxide emission from the soil. So it can get good information and you can get it to report as frequently as you want. These are set to report once every hour, but you could have it report once a day, or you could have it report every few minutes, whatever you'd like. Other examples of this kind of sensor would be for security on a farm. If you have a farmstead that's distant, several miles away from where you are, and you have a fuel tank there, you can have a liquid level sensor and it'll tell you if the fuel goes down in the middle of the night. And it can also have these sensors set up to send you text messages. So if you had a quonset or a building away from your yard and somebody opened the door in the middle of the night, you'd immediately get a text message. So it's good for security. Another last thing is with livestock, monitoring livestock. There are GPS tags and GPS collars that you can put on animals, and the same thing then it will tell you where that animal is, however often you set it up to do that. In about 15 minutes it'll tell you where the animal is. And these tags are a little more expensive than the technology will come down. They're about $75 each now. So a little too expensive for putting on a whole herd, but maybe for one or two. The cost involved in the Laurel Wand technology, the sensors run from like a temperature sensor might be $15, a soil moisture sensor might be $75, a rain gauge maybe $125. So it varies. The gateways are from $100 to $300 or $400 depending upon which one you buy. So this is technology that can be used to monitor your assets, monitor your livestock, monitor your crops. And if anyone is interested in learning more about it or getting some specifics, just feel free to contact me through NDSU Extension.