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> What stops farmers from slapping a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino with an array of sensors, GPS, modems and other electronics to "DIY" their tractors and other e

> What stops farmers from slapping a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino with an array of sensors, GPS, modems and other electronics to "DIY" their tractors and other electronic/automated farm equipment? There are a handful of farmers doing exactly that. Cost is a major hurdle though. Not so much the cost of the actual hardware (although sufficiently accurate and precise GPS units have only recently started to come down in price), but the opportunity cost of developing such systems. Time spent working on them is time spent away from the farm business. Spending time on improving agronomy and marketing could yield hundreds of thousands of dollars of additional revenue vs. saving $50,000 on a commercial solution that will retain much of its value and can be resold later. It just doesn't make sense from a business perspective. Only those who see it as an exciting hobby will venture down that road.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
In principle this is what investors are for. There is known demand among farmers for repairable tractors, but it costs a moderate amount (more than an individual farmer has) to develop one. So you go raise some investment money to develop the software and then make it back by selling repairable tractors at a profit. Maybe if you succeed you'll get copycats using your software on their own tractors, but by that point you've already succeeded. It may even help you by growing your ecosystem and making you more competitive against the closed incumbents.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  In practice though, how easy is it to find an investment for an expensive venture you don't intend to directly profit from? Investors will want their returns, and they'll likely push for the same means the project was started to circumvent in the first place.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    But you do intend to directly profit from it. If you just start out selling tractors that are only equivalent to the incumbents and with all the same restrictions, who is going to buy them? The reason people want to buy from you instead of them is that it's possible to repair your tractors. And if people are buying from you, you're making money. Maybe a few years later the investors decide they might like to make even more by closing things up, but by that point the software is already published for free on the internet (which was what got customers interested to begin with). So if they do all that happens is that someone else starts making repairable tractors, which people still prefer, using the software which is by then free and already exists. Have people not noticed how much money Amazon makes out of "your margin is my opportunity"? Taking market share from the old guard by making less (but still some) profit per unit is a great way to make money.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

In principle this is what investors are for. There is known demand among farmers for repairable tractors, but it costs a moderate amount (more than an individual farmer has) to develop one. So you go raise some investment money to develop the software and then make it back by selling repairable tractors at a profit. Maybe if you succeed you'll get copycats using your software on their own tractors, but by that point you've already succeeded. It may even help you by growing your ecosystem and making you more competitive against the closed incumbents.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
In practice though, how easy is it to find an investment for an expensive venture you don't intend to directly profit from? Investors will want their returns, and they'll likely push for the same means the project was started to circumvent in the first place.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  But you do intend to directly profit from it. If you just start out selling tractors that are only equivalent to the incumbents and with all the same restrictions, who is going to buy them? The reason people want to buy from you instead of them is that it's possible to repair your tractors. And if people are buying from you, you're making money. Maybe a few years later the investors decide they might like to make even more by closing things up, but by that point the software is already published for free on the internet (which was what got customers interested to begin with). So if they do all that happens is that someone else starts making repairable tractors, which people still prefer, using the software which is by then free and already exists. Have people not noticed how much money Amazon makes out of "your margin is my opportunity"? Taking market share from the old guard by making less (but still some) profit per unit is a great way to make money.