Smart Farm Systems
Acquired by Farmers Edge, a publicly traded agricultural technology company
Lee Bennett, Project Manager & Co-CTO — built a remote irrigation control system for farms across the US, connecting mobile devices directly to physical pumps and sensors in the field, eventually growing to 20+ farms before the entire company was acquired.
The Problem
Farmers running irrigation across large properties had one recurring, expensive problem: every single adjustment required a physical trip to the site. Turning a pump on, checking a water level, responding to a change in weather, all of it meant someone driving out to a remote field, making the change by hand, and driving back. For farms spread across rice paddies in some regions and blueberry fields in others, this added up to real hours and real fuel burned every single week on a task that had nothing to do with actually farming.
There was no way to check on a pump's status without physically standing next to it, no way to react quickly when conditions changed, and no way to scale the operation without also scaling the number of trips someone had to make. The technology to run a farm remotely didn't really exist yet in a form small and mid-sized agricultural operations could actually use.
The Solution
We built a custom mobile app, for iOS and Android, that connected directly to physical base stations installed at each irrigation site. Every base station ran on a Raspberry Pi, wired into the sensors and equipment already in the field, pumps, water level measurers, and other on-site hardware, giving farmers a live picture of exactly what was happening at each location. A farmer could open the app from anywhere and see real conditions on the ground, then send a command straight to the hardware itself, turning a pump on, adjusting based on water levels, all without driving anywhere.
This was built well before today's AI tools existed, so the work was old-fashioned engineering discipline: a managed development team, careful QA testing, and a system built to be reliable in the field, not just in a demo. What started with a handful of farms grew to more than twenty operations running on the platform, including rice farms and blueberry farms across different regions of the US, before Smart Farm Systems was ultimately acquired by Farmers Edge, a publicly traded agricultural technology company.
The feedback that mattered most wasn't about the technology at all. Farmers told us they got real time back, time to watch their kids play sports instead of standing at a pump. That was the actual point.
The Tech Stack
Hardware Meets the Field
Remote Base Station Hardware
Raspberry Pi
A physical unit installed at each irrigation site, wired directly into the pumps and sensors already in the field.
Remote Connectivity Layer
STUN Server
Let the mobile app reach a Raspberry Pi out in a farm field in real time, from anywhere, without needing to be on the same network as the hardware.
Field Sensor Integration
Pump & Water Level Sensors
The base station read live conditions directly from equipment already installed on the farm, giving an accurate, real-time picture without a site visit.
Automated Farm Control
Sensor-Triggered Automation
The system acted on live water levels automatically. Rice paddies need water kept above a threshold, quarries need it kept below one, so the automation handled both directions correctly per site.
Cross-Platform Mobile App
iOS & Android
Farmers controlled irrigation from their own phone, no special hardware or training required beyond the app itself.
Real-Time Alerts
Push Notifications
Farmers were notified the moment something needed attention, instead of finding out on the next site visit.
The Results
Built to the standards of a publically traded company
$20,000 per pump
In annual savings and improved crop yield for farmers, per the company's own analysis
Under 1 year
For the system to pay for itself, against a $7,000 per-pump cost
Acquired
By Farmers Edge, a publicly traded agricultural technology company