Validating Farmwave - Don’t Overthink It
Farmwave has never claimed to, and never will be, perfect.
If your idea of validating Farmwave involves getting a drop pan, throwing it out at about the exact same time as one of the cameras takes a picture, and then counting the kernels on the ground and comparing it to what is seen in that Farmwave image ... you're overthinking it.
As mentioned in another article in this knowledge base, we do not see underneath material other than grain (MOG).
Given it takes a picture every three seconds, there is the time interval in between where we may not see something.
There is the off chance that lighting is just a certain way, a piece of grain is just a certain way in flight or on the ground, that we miss one.
It's possible that a peanut shell, (as an example), is actually opened so it's only half the shell but in flight or on the ground it looks like a full peanut so we counted it as such therefore it's a false positive.
Farmwave, nor any other kind of AI, is perfect.
It's the trends on the graph that make the difference.
The number of counts done per acre/hectare.
The graph is where it's at. Conditions change throughout the day, from field to field, and from crop to crop. Setting your thresholds to where you are willing to allow for loss, (because nothing is perfect), is one of the more important aspects of setting up Farmwave.
As the graph moves, it will go up if more loss is seen, and if it leaves your acceptable loss line, (the green zone), that's when you want to look at the images and see what changes can be made and where it's coming from; header or combine. When you make those changes, the graph will trend back down, letting you know that the changes you made worked!
At the very core of Farmwave, that's it. There's loss.
The advantages of Farmwave are the amount of counts we do in a single acre, (200+), or even in a single day, (>20,000), without stopping the combine and having to get out of the cab.
This is not something a human could do, as well as concurrent loss checks, when changes are made to see if they worked or not.
Farmwave is an AI-assisted tool to allow for ongoing loss checks without having to stop the combine and get out of the cab. It also adds more value compared to other loss checking devices by accounting for header loss sensing which is nonexistent today. In certain crops, such as peanuts and cotton, it is the only loss sensing technology available on the market today.
Our goal at Farmwave is to make your life and your job easier by integrating value-added technology. We want to keep it simple.
Don't overthink it.