When I opened my Outlook app this morning, the email at the top of my inbox came from Nursery Management, and the headline caught my attention: “Don’t leave the future to chance.” If you’re like me, leaving things to chance is frightening.
At 2nd Sight, we know life happens, but we did our best to anticipate how our equipment would be used (and abused) in the field. We couldn't just cross our fingers and hope that a worker wouldn't get our equipment wet, would not drop a handheld out in the orchard, or hit one of our FairPick scale frames by a tractor.... We wanted to be proactive with the design and selection of our equipment so that you, and our own 2nd Sight team, could sleep well at night.
Rugged equipment
Your employees will drop things, get them dirty, and maybe even wet. It’s no coincidence that we utilize durable and reliable waterproof handheld devices with our labor and product tracking systems. These “Ruggedized Handheld Computers” are designed with safeguards against dirt and debris. They can take on the challenge of daily, outdoor field use. Wondering about the FairPick scale or FlexHub box? A team of experienced 2nd Sight engineers designed these systems to be put to the test too. We don’t recommend mistreating your electronic equipment, but we’ve had scales withstand drops off the beds of trucks and live to tell the tale.
Durable employee badges
RFID technology has become more widespread in many ag and nonagricultural applications. It was another intentional decision to utilize RFID cards as employee badges with our systems. The antenna inside PVC protective layer can only be damaged if completely bent in half. Dirt, dust, water, mud, and sweat do not interfere with the ability to scan an employee’s badge. Barcodes, on the other hand, cannot be read quickly and easily if there is dirt or dust on them, or if the label has been damaged by water or sweat. RFID cards also have the advantage of being reusable from season to season as they can be re-assigned over and over again.
Data integrity
We want to ensure that your data is there when you need it. We can’t just hope that a handheld getting run over by a tractor won’t damage the device’s memory. That’s why we have data stored not only on the device itself, but also on a micro SD card. Once you sync data to the Portal, you now have your data stored in several locations:
- On the handheld (or FairPick Pro box flash memory)
- On a micro SD card in the handheld (or FairPick Pro box)
- On the Portal
- In Portal database backups (yes, we back up your data for you automatically)
- In data logs and reports that you’ve downloaded from the Portal
We know how important it is for equipment to work when you need it to, to have the data ready when you need to run payroll, and to have contingency plans for when life happens. At 2nd Sight, we do our best to not leave the future to chance so that we can all sleep better at night.