I’ve been making some Shortcuts to use around the farm, and thought y’all might be interested in seeing one.
A little context…
Corn is sold at a standard of 15.5% moisture content. Anything that tests higher than that will be penalized by the end user because it is too wet which means I lose money. If it is drier than 15.5% there is no penalty, but the weight of the corn will be less which means I also lose money. The goal is to ship corn as close to 15.5% as possible. The grain bins I store my corn in have a fan system that pulls in outside air at the bottom of the bin, pushes the air through the corn, and then the air is blown out the top of the bin. Based on the outside air temperature and humidity the moisture content of the corn can either be raised or lowered by running the fan system.
Companies sell controls for several thousands of $$$ that will do this automatically, but that’s not really in my budget.
I made a Shortcut that:
- polls the API of one my weather stations for current temperature and humidity
- looks up the corn equilibrium moisture content at those conditions in a JSON dictionary stored in iCloud
- compares that to the corn moisture content I input
It’s a very niche use of Shortcuts, but I guess that’s the point. In an hour I built something that can potentially save me quite of bit of time and money. No one, including myself, would be interested in investing the resources to create an app for something this simple with such a small potential user base. Shortcuts empowers us to use our iOS devices for our needs.