GrainsWest Summer 2018

GrainsWest: How did you get involved in automated farm technology? Brian Tischler: I kind of have two lives. I started out in electron- ics, specifically in biomedical electronics in a hospital—all those things that go beep and keep people alive. I did that for quite a few years before I took over my dad’s farm in the ’90s. GW: Your farm is a bit different than others in Alberta. How do you operate it? BT: Together with a neighbour, we farm about 2,500 acres. We also work with a rancher. Our farm is a mixed collaborative farm. We’re all independent, but we work together and get the benefits and the win-win of both cattle and grain farming. It allows us to grow more crops and have a built-in market for our crops [since we can use them as feed for the cattle] and straw. It works out really well. GW: Did you think you’d ever get back into programming while running the farm? BT: Along the way, I’ve still done some programming and electronics work. It’s something like riding a bicycle—you never forget it. When I first got to the farm, I got into game program- ming. Of course, it had no real-life purpose for the farm, so I gave it up for about 10 years. Then we needed our tractor and our air seeder to be able to map where we went in the cab, so I started looking into GPS and using my game background and experience and just started programming it. That became AgOpenGPS. GW: How would you describe AgOpenGPS? BT: AgOpenGPS is just a Windows tablet or laptop applica- tion that reads the GPS data from any GPS receiver and does auto-steer, section control and mapping—all the functions of many of the commercial products that you buy and put into your tractor. In a nutshell, that’s it. It’s a precision-ag application for remote controlling the tractor and its implements. It shows where you’ve been and turns off the tool that’s doing the applying [of fertilizer and seed] where you’ve already applied—that’s called The Food Issue 2018 grainswest.com 23 YOU CAN CALL BRIAN TISCHLER MANY THINGS—AN INNOVATOR, A PROGRAMMER, A FARMER—BUT DON’T CALL HIM A TECHIE. DESPITE ESCHEWING THE TITLE , HE IS THE CREATOR OF AgOpenGPS, A CUT TING-EDGE , FREE, OPEN-SOURCE CODE USED TO AUTOMATE FARM VEHICLES. WITH USERS ALL OVER NORTH AMERICA AND EVEN A FEW IN EUROPE, THE PROJECT TISCHLER STARTED AS A WAY TO MAKE HIS OWN FARM MORE EFFICIENT HAS GROWN MORE THAN HE COULD HAVE EXPECTED. BY ELLEN COTTEE • PHOTOS BY ANTHONY HOULE Fromdigital games to autonomous tractors PROGRAMMINGPOWER