Built a simple orchard monitoring system — how would you approach getting the first local customers?
Hi everyone,
I’m a software engineer from Poland and recently started building a small monitoring and decision-support system for orchards.
The long-term idea is to help with things like:
- irrigation decisions during droughts,
- frost alerts in spring,
- cold storage monitoring,
- wind and weather condition monitoring,
- leaf wetness / disease-risk related monitoring.
Right now, because of the current season, I’m mainly focusing on drought monitoring and helping decide when orchards actually need watering.
The system already works:
- all deployed on VPS
- built on open-source tools
- real sensors connectes to real servers, with stable communication
Technically, I feel comfortable with the project. My biggest challenge now is figuring out how to get the first real local customers and validate whether orchard owners would actually pay for this kind of service.
My current plan is:
- start locally in rural areas near me,
- offer short pilot installations,
- focus on solving one real problem first instead of building a huge “smart farming platform”.
I’d really appreciate advice from people who built anything similar or related in any way. Is it really needed? Are people willing to pay for this kind of system? What should I focus on now? What do I do :D
I want to be the "local guy that can do it cheaper and better than huge companies" - but I have really no idea how to proceed, or just give up because the market is crowded with competitors