S11E142 Junell Abdi/GEIA.AI - From IT Architect to AI AgTech Innovator

Harry Duran

0:00 - 0:06

So Janelle Abdi, founder and CTO of Ghia AI, thank you so much for joining me on the Vertical Farming podcast.

Junell Abdi

0:07 - 0:18

Thank you very much, Harry. I was very happy to join this podcast and I hope that we will engage our listeners.

Harry Duran

0:18 - 1:02

Yes, I know we will. So we connected at the indoor Agtech summit in Chicago, and I'm always excited to attend every year because I meet some old friends and I get to meet new people and we connected and we had a nice chat there. So I was looking forward to digging in a little deeper and telling your story because I'm always excited about the obviously the big companies in this space that everybody knows of, but there's a lot of small startups and I think indoor Agtech does a really good job of giving space and smaller booths, but some visibility to startups because I think those are important. And some of these startups will hopefully go on to build, do bigger and better things. So I'm curious, what was your experience at the conference? Do you find those times and those events valuable?

Junell Abdi

1:03 - 2:06

Yeah, definitely. Meeting with industry leaders or potential partners, I can see like everyone in that room was a potential partner, so I had to speak with everyone. And if I. Yeah, I also enjoyed it very much. I mean, to be on such a stage, such an important stage for a tiny little startup from Europe. So it definitely does put us on a good level in that matter. And yeah, it was amazing. I have to say that I was stressed a bit, it was my first time ever pitching three minutes was even the hardest part of it. But once I got over it, it was like really amazing. But yeah, like I think it was really cool and I think it's very important that we will be attending it like in the next times too, hopefully like with a success story as well.

Harry Duran

2:07 - 2:16

So we'll dig in a little bit of your background, but for people that are discovering you for the first time, where are, are you calling in from and where's home for you?

Junell Abdi

2:16 - 3:12

Now at the moment I'm calling from Hungary in European Union. I mention it in my pitch. So my story starts in Israel. I'm a palestinian Israeli, but also a hungarian half. After finishing high school in Israel, I moved on to Hungary and I got a based here. And I think my story starts that I'm a city boy who trying to make a farming in the city and as an it guy who's trying to automate and make things like more efficient and easier. That's one of the reasons how I started Gaia. I moved to the village, to the countryside, and it sparked some inefficiencies that I have to solve by myself and that's how Gaia more or less was born.

Harry Duran

3:13 - 3:41

So I was curious to learn a little bit how you got into it. I saw a little bit about your LinkedIn and some of your earlier posts. I think someone asked you for some help with the server request and you had to figure it out and then you realized, well, I gotta learn this on my own. So I get the sense that you're a bit of a self starter and that's the way you tackle problems. Like if you see something that needs to be fixed, you may not know the solution at the beginning, but you'll figure out how to fix it and how to learn what it is you need to learn.

Junell Abdi

3:41 - 4:31

Definitely. That's, yeah, that's me, that's my way. I always had to autodict always learning by myself. Yeah, those days, like we're speaking 98, 99, like there is only one sort of technician, which is like a computer technician. So I was a bit out of that normal scope and yeah, when I did that server, that was like the first journey of me in the Internet. So I decided to make my own servers and I became to be like a data hosting ever since, until these days. So yeah, mostly I'm doing things by myself. I'm learning and hacking my way into things. That's the norm.

Harry Duran

4:32 - 4:41

If I was to have a conversation with like your family members or your parents, is this something that goes back to you like as a child? Is this you always like figuring things out or naturally curious?

Junell Abdi

4:41 - 5:21

Yeah, yeah. They often say, well, I will be a scientist or like Leonardo da Vinci in a way. They always ask how this challenge or how the skills came from. So I think I'm combining my father's art, he's an artist, and I think I'm combining both of the worlds. And I think when you combine them, then you become to be like a sort of a hacker, someone who tried to fix things to create new things. So yeah, my parents definitely called me like Leonardo da Vinci, maybe in the.

Harry Duran

5:21 - 6:03

Bounds area, but no, I think that's good. I think what many people obviously think of him as a sculptor and a painter, but he is a polymath and he was just had so many interests and he was interested in so many things. And I think as more and more people are discovering the hidden messages behind the vitruvian man and like the sacred geometry and that can go down a whole rabbit hole of things that I find fascinating, like ancient civilizations and like what's happening in the pyramids. And so like he was curious too at the time because he was receiving all this knowledge from all these different places. And I think there's something to be said for people who have this natural curiosity and always want to know like what, you know, how things are made or just learning more about how to become a better person in this world.

Junell Abdi

6:04 - 6:40

I think that's like a specific gene, I think, which causes this. As one of biohackers mentioned it, he's selling like a kit for checking out if you have this curiosity or this gene which forces you to dive into the places that nobody will dive and then say the results. And maybe like this we try to solve not the humanity but common issues in the societies.

Harry Duran

6:41 - 6:45

Yeah, definitely. What's your earliest memory of food?

Junell Abdi

6:46 - 6:54

I do remember very well the Gerber I used to eat, it used to be banana with apples.

Harry Duran

6:55 - 7:17

Yeah, it's so interesting when people, I've had that question asked of me and the minute you think of the food, you think of the taste and you think of where you were in that moment and it just, it's almost like a time machine. It immediately places you back in terms of like your first interaction of remembering to taste and you know, the first time maybe like your taste buds came online or something like that, which I always think is fascinating.

Junell Abdi

7:18 - 7:48

Yeah, well lately I had these deja vu's more like more often because I have like a little daughter. And so memories came like even the days when you first want to step in and to see yourself in the mirror and you're still too short for that. And I remember, oh, I will be bigger, I will be long, tall enough in order to reach that mirror. So yeah, I'm having that all the time, especially lately.

Harry Duran

7:49 - 8:17

And then what's your earliest memory or what's been your relationship with like having access to fresh produce? You know, obviously people that come from different generations, some people that we've spoken to here previously grew up on a farm, some people grew up in the city. So their interaction with fresh produce was the supermarket. And I'm curious, you know, as we get into this topic of vertical farming, what, you know, when you think of this idea of access to fresh produce, you know, what are your memories like?

Junell Abdi

8:17 - 10:06

Yeah, very easy. We lived in Haifa and we lived like 50 meters from the market, so all the veggies and fruits were all the time very near us. And also as my father is an artist, he has like a small little heaven in the middle of the city with a garden, a fruit garden. So I tried as a child to plant there, like tomatoes, cucumbers, and we also had like plums, japanese plums. Yeah, I forgetting the names of them. But like lemon tree, oranges, also dates, I mean, Israel. So we have some dates there. So it was like from the early on, I've been always like loving to be very near to the source of the veggies. We austin house from the villages. Like an old lady used to come with a around 100 liters, no, maybe 50 liters of yogurt on her head. And she is coming from the village all the way into the city on selling cubics of yogurt. That's the best yogurt I ever had. Until today. I even made a machine trying to imitate that yogurt. And I tried to take the bacteria from, from that source, and I tried to make it in Hungary too. So, yeah, these childhood things are. Until today, I think it's like shaping you when you are adult, you don't feel it, but they do have an effect in a way.

Harry Duran

10:07 - 10:34

So, Janelle, you obviously have a big and a long, strong background in technology. You've been, you know, you have this really relationship with it. And it seemed like if anyone was following your path, that this is, was going to be where you were headed and where you would end up. So I'm curious, when did you start to have this interest or become aware of what was happening with produce, with vertical farming, with what people were doing in this industry?

Junell Abdi

10:35 - 15:53

Yeah, well, when I started like into farming, I was thinking, how can I save time? How can I make things automatic? Because I saw many things which are inefficient in my background. It's a vertical, one of the first Internet vertical farm for non edible. And down there is actually an aquaponics. It's an aquaponic system with fishes. And I had golden fishes down there. And the starting of aquaponics, I think it was like in 2014 when I started this mission. So, yeah, I moved to countryside and we're living a bit half underground, and we wanted to improve the air quality or improve the habitat in my home office. So one of the things was that, oh, let's put many plants and whatever they will demand, that for sure is going to improve our living as well. So by them, like, they also improved. So we chose to plants which were in the list of the NASA top air purifying plants. When doing for the plants, in order for them to thrive, the best was thinking, okay, we'll have to supply them with light, with the nutrition, with the water. I mean, the nutrition as like fishes. So. And the perfect conditions. At the beginning, the light wasn't so strong, so I saw that they are nothing. So happy. I also was looking on the Internet, how do you start an aquaponics cycle? Because there is a bacteria involved and you need to introduce the ammonia. So one of the things was that I have to, I mean, urinate in the water in order to, for it to make the first cycle. And that was like a bit weird, but I think it did work. And I was always curious, how can I sense it up? And that slowly started to bring up the idea of having like, sensors in order to monitor everything, having the ph sensor to see the EC, having to see like, what is affecting what does it really help? Is there a cycle? Are the fishes feeding the plants or they are not feeding the plants? So that was the first step. The second step was I always have to fill up 120 liters. I had to automate that part as well, and so on. And then I was thinking, okay, I think everybody needs such a system. Everybody have similar issues. And a friend of mine, which is an expert in hydroponic, in aeroponics and aquaponic, he was always like, there for me, to help me, to direct me, what should I do, what's the best? And slowly, slowly, we were like, okay, let's implement some of this knowledge into a software and let's test it up. And that's like how started to rolling. And he was also like, okay, I have few things. I also want to automate. Maybe we can implement that in the software. Slowly, slowly things started to gather up and it became to be at the beginning, it was called a grow app. In 2016, when delivered, started to building the real thing. After building the prototype, thought, okay, let's gonna call it Gaia. And the idea as I aligned it, because we had lots of issues with the, with knowledge, with data. Like, not everybody knows what plant can go with which one likes what can all be together, and so on. So I was thinking, the most important thing is to learn how every farmer is doing it, how they grow. First, we want to learn that part. And while learning that part, we would be teaching the artificial intelligence with data sets, which are real data sets. And that's how we got the point. The eureka. Let's develop the most intelligent farmer. So first, it should be a community based, it should be as cheap as possible. I mean, if possible, then, yeah, it should be affordable for everyone. So even someone like me, who just like air purification and nice home office background, they could take use of it and then it developed further on to having it for yields. So for edibles, how can a farmer increase his yields in his own farm? Can we tell the farmer if he has, like, an issues, is he making a mistake, temperature problem? Or maybe in the grow setup itself, there is like, some basic issue which is causing all the time issues, and that's how we rolled in into Gaia until today.

Harry Duran

15:53 - 16:25

So obviously, it looks like you've been doing this for a while, because you started Gaia in 2016. And I imagine a lot of the initial focus may have changed in terms of who you were thinking about working with and the types of clients that maybe you work with now. So for people that may not be familiar with gay or just discovering you for the first time today on this interview, how would you describe now in 2024, who is an ideal client for gay and who you work with now?

Junell Abdi

16:26 - 18:25

Yeah, we just started, we were, like, testing it privately with some friends, and now we want to start public beta testing. So at the moment, we have, like, zero users as at least public user. I don't want to count my friends and family, but we will be targeting, like, every farmer, small farmer people who are doing it in DIY, and they need help until up to the big farms, the big greenhouses. But I think at the moment, on this stage, I think they rather will be. Maybe later on, when it's more developed, they will be more interested in it. So at the moment, we are more focused on a smaller scale farmers, or even not farmers, like people who just want to have a green wall or want to take care of their veggies or one of the things I was thinking, like, let's have next to the fridge, let's have another small fridge and we can maybe grow strawberries. We could grow, I mean, leafy greens, obviously, but tomato, I mean, that's like, very common. But I was thinking always about something which is not so common, like strawberry or berries type, and let's have them all year round. Maybe we just need to make, like, a small fridge, which it's very nice looking, but still you need an automation. And there are lots of DIY's up there on the Internet describing how they make such a gross setup. And I would like to help these people to connect and to make it up to automate that part. And, yeah, we also would like to go to bigger farms, to bigger farmers who are like commercial growers, of course.

Harry Duran

18:26 - 18:46

So, Janelle, can you talk a little bit about the technology that Gaea provides? And is it, you know, is it sensors and maybe to kind of paint the picture for the listener and the viewer. Like, you know exactly what happens when you start working with someone or in the testing that you're doing now. Like specifically, what does the setup look like? And, you know, what do people have to do to maintain this on an ongoing basis?

Junell Abdi

18:47 - 22:44

Yeah, so we offer automation, we offer the hardware kits. There are some hardwares involved, so we offer them the automation level that they would like to automate. So whether is it environmental control monitoring or is it a water reservoir monitoring control. We also offering DIY kits. So users could very affordable way. They could only have like the board, the PCP board. They could attach any sensors they want, if they already have some sensors. So we do support a variety of sensors which are pretty like common worldwide. You can buy them in aliexpress or in, or in anywhere else. So the parts involve one of these, like, okay, that's like a normal socket, but that's like a Wi Fi socket. So this allows the control of the light out of the palms or whatever. The board is also possible to control directly a relay. If somebody have some electrical background, then they could connect them with a relay. We also have like a nutrition doser. This one is like a 3d printed and it's like a normal one, but this one is also a diYe. So user could opt for 3d print the casing and buy only the hardware, or they could get all the set pre assembled. We also have the gateway. The gateway is actually the brain. It's the local brain. So it's taking care of everything. Even if there is a problem with an Internet or if it's made to be like a disaster proof. So it's also all the time keeping an eye on growing. Another part. We have like the time lapse cam. A user could buy any cam, or we also offer him one. And by connecting it to the app, they could see the analysis together with the time lapse. And they could look at the analysis and say, okay, I gave them x and y nutrition and I, the ph was perfect. Let's see what happens after that. And if they see like, wow, it's blooming very good, then probably they did a good job. If not, then they will see that in time lapse, it allows us to communicate and to look in a real time. Like we translate the time between the human time and the plant time with using the time lapse. So yeah, that's like all the kits, obviously, which making the kit to be more expensive than another kit is the sensors. So, you know, some sensors cost like hundred dollars. Other sensors could be like up to $2,000. It depends how deep you want the data to be, how accurate you want it to be. We have like some recommendations. When you are using the nutrition doser and you want it fully automatic, then it's best if you are using like ion sensor so you know exactly which nutrition, how much. And that's, I think, the big, the best saving you can have over a long period of time, because you never flush out the water completely. You only add a and top it up with the necessary nutritions that you need.

Harry Duran

22:46 - 22:58

So it seems like it's very modular, like, almost like a plug and play solution. So people can decide which pieces they need for their farm, and then working with you, piece these together to figure out what they're trying to measure.

Junell Abdi

22:59 - 24:08

Yeah, it's very modular. And they can, using the settings, they can always define. They can use one sensor for more in one function. The most important was to have it modular. And the people can always extend the system as they need. So maybe at the beginning they needed to just figure it out what they want to automate. So we try to help them using a starter kit by saying, okay, if you want to have the environmental, then we recommend you. Or you can buy them directly from the kit. Like sensors for environment. The temperature sensor looks to measure the lights. Are the lights enough or not? Of course, more professionals, they would like to know not only if the lumens are enough, they want to know if the power is enough or not. Most important is to support every sensor and allow the user to anytime he can even buy a sensor and just attach it, as long as there is a space in the microcontroller board.

Harry Duran

24:08 - 24:36

And this is really like speaking to the concept of like, or the technology of like, Internet of things like IoT, right? Like having these sensors and envisioning, you know, people talk about this a lot, you know, just turning your lights on, or just having sensors for everything, noticing when the sun goes down and changing the ambient light in the room. And so this feels like, it's like almost like a part of that ecosystem, like the IoT ecosystem, but really adapted to what's happening in a growing environment.

Junell Abdi

24:37 - 27:03

Yes, definitely. Yeah, it's Iot. And I will also mention that at the beginning of the road, we didn't think about selling hardware. And we thought, okay, I mean, user can put combine together things and, you know, Iota. So. But then we noticed that not everybody is aware, not everybody is technical enough for this. So for that, we created the ultimate Iot board, which supports many types of sensors, connectivity types, also voltage differences. Like some sensors will work on 5 volts, 24 volts, 12 volts, and just to make, like, to be as suitable as much as possible for every case. So we created this board, but we also support, like, if you have your own arduino or any board like in the market, then we also provide the firmware. You just upload the firmware to it and you're ready to go. Using our pairing wizard for IoT devices. But we do have some small differences with, let's say, actuators, Google or Alexa, sort of Amazon, they are selling relays or switchers, but the way they communicate, the way they confirm things, is not really correct, I think for a system, which I look at it as a life supporting system. So whenever the system is turning the light on, we have different confirmation levels to confirm that, oh, the light is on. Then the microcontroller said, I switch it on and I confirm that it's on, but I'm not sure 100% maybe, maybe the bulb is out. So we're using the sensor, the Lux sensor or any sensor which giving us some indication about the light. And using that one, we get our forced confirmation that, okay, the light is really on. And with everything we're trying to do is always to have as multiple confirmation as possible to make sure that while I am in the summit, there is no problem with the wall.

Harry Duran

27:04 - 28:18

That makes a lot of sense. And obviously, when you start talking about IoT devices, it's just multiples of data points. You used to have a couple of things to monitor, and then you get tens and hundreds, and you start to get really big installations. You could get to the thousands. So you start to be concerned about data overwhelm. And what do you look at? Analysis paralysis, maybe. It's like, there's so much information that I don't know what to look at. So how do you think about those problems? And how do you think about helping the user understand all these sensors are great and all this information is coming in, but, you know, what of the information is actionable and which ones do I need to be concerned about? Because, you know, I used to work for a customer service reporting team, and we used to prepare reports for the VP, and we would prepare reports for, like, you know, these. It would take a couple of hours to prepare a report, but the VP would look at it in 30 seconds, and it's like, oh, just really quickly. So I tell my team, like, you got 30 seconds, you better tell him, like, what's the most important thing here because, and it needs to be clear, use color. Red means bad, green means good. Like, you know, because people, you know, with all these sensors and there's, if there's too much information, you don't know which one you should be looking at.

Junell Abdi

28:18 - 29:24

Well, on two level. So on technical level, not only the system is modular, but also coming from a background in the hosting industry. So I was very well aware of these bottlenecks and these issues. The architecture of the system from the beginning is modular and expandable easily. So for me, just like I can open up a whole new cloud within like minutes. In matter of the amount of data, the user can opt to have logging of this data more frequent or less frequently. But that's like depending on the package in the future at least we want to put it in the packages. As of sorting the data. For now, some of the data is used by the system itself with a built in analysis. For example, we say, oh, the light is not strong enough or we are trying to hop. So I'm sorry for that.

Harry Duran

29:24 - 29:27

That's a great example of a sensor maybe activating.

Junell Abdi

29:28 - 29:33

Yeah, it means that the light, the plants, sunset time they went to sleep.

Harry Duran

29:33 - 29:36

That's great. You see the sensors in action.

Junell Abdi

29:37 - 29:40

Yes. I can force it on back.

Harry Duran

29:41 - 29:43

If the plants need to rest, the plants need to rest.

Junell Abdi

29:44 - 31:16

Yeah. One of the things, like for example, yeah, we can tell the heating in the grow system, is it, is it efficient, is it not sufficient? The root chamber. So we do give like an alert, very basic types of alert for the user that we gather them from this data. That's for now at least. All other data, we just log them and the user can see them in one analysis and say in one big chart, and they can choose what to put on, what to take off, what to see, and they will try to figure out about this data that they have, like the temperature, the NPK or the ph, the water and so on. That's one of the options. We want to improve that in the future. I mean, we are looking now for investment in order to go into our analytics and management part where we want to tickle exactly these issues, where we can format the data to showcase them to the user in a better way, in a gamification way to get a better results for him, like how to improve the yields or what they can do for the next time. For now, we are trying to make use of this as much as possible, but in a hard coded way. So it's pre coded.

Harry Duran

31:17 - 31:51

Yeah. And I think, yeah. Partnering with people who have a specialty in delivering the information in a presentable way. I think of a conversation I had with Neta Basegui. She's the CEO of a company called Microclimates. And they specialize in the sensors are in the farm, but they create the dashboards and the charts and the alerts, and they give the user the information they need at the moment that it's important for them. So I think, you know, working and figuring out who might be a good partner for you so that you can deliver all this information that you're collecting.

Junell Abdi

31:51 - 33:53

Without disclosing too much about the whole idea. But one of the most important thing, I mentioned it in the beginning was a knowledge sharing community, and for this, I call it Gaia hub. So the hub is responsible to connect all the parts together from the community. Part the farmers, the growers, the other part robotics, third party robotics accountancy software website, LinkedIn, whatever, as well as connecting them with other. It could be nutritions, for example. We would like to have it like whenever the nutrition is almost over, then we notify the user, would you like to place an order? Then we place an order for him automatically. Or we could also like connect labs. One of the ideas is that we will be like a sort of a middleman. The user could take some samples, send them to the lab, and we will get the results together with a user. And that's like just increasing the data set we have. So the most important is that this hub is fully modular, fully connectable with each side. And for that we have like the open API. Using that, some other developers, they could further develop it on or integrate it with their own system. And yeah, they don't need us like from GAA in order to do anything. But if they would like something to have it within the app, then we might need to partner up in order to integrate their side of the tech in our own app. Last time I saw your podcast with rooted.

Harry Duran

33:53 - 33:56

Yes, rooted robotics Maximilian. Yeah.

Junell Abdi

33:57 - 35:08

I discussed with them about how we can integrate their own robotics within Gaia. So who are looking forward to partner up on that level. Yeah. But also with labs, with providers, some provides the grow systems. So these could be beneficial for the users in case of they need it. So I think, I look at it like, and I say that I see it like a Google. Like it's a go place, not only for automation and not only for management, but also for knowledge, knowledge sharing, and also for finding the tools that you might need. Not everyone is aware where we can find these tools. In Europe, for example, we just started with that. You can have an aqua. Yeah, aquaponics grow medium. You can buy them in a shop. Two, three years ago, you needed to make your own tubes and or you have to go to hydroponic specialized shops.

Harry Duran

35:08 - 35:44

So, yeah, it seems like it's coming on board and there's more access to these technologies in Europe where previously it wasn't before. And so obviously, where do you see the focus for Gaia as you start to think about expanding? And you said you're doing some testing now with friends and family that have been testing the system, but if you think about the roadmap and what you're planning for the future, where do you see Gaea expanding and where do you see, like in terms of market specific markets or specific countries or areas where you can see that there's going to be a good fit for what you're providing?

Junell Abdi

35:44 - 38:29

Well, worldwide, definitely as an IT startup. So yeah, worldwide, that's. There is no definition of a specific area, but now we are limited because of the hardware, so because of the voltage. So at the moment we have the 230 volts systems and we like european standardization. And next up will be the US 110 volts standard. I mean, we can still offer for us customers, but without like the switches, they will have to deal with the relays or to connect with electrician. So at the moment, the only thing stopping is the technical, the voltage technical, we have to produce it, and it's costing a lot. So I mean, we are very early still precede. So that's like the first challenges we're facing, in a way. How do I see it? Like in the future, we want to start up with small growers, small farms, small commercial farms. I have already 23 people who applied for the public beta testing, some of which have really nice, amazing ideas. For example, one is a growing saffron indoors. So he figured it out that saffron, you know, it's only once in a year and it's only three days and four days around, and you have to hand pick each piece. So his idea was, what happens if we grow them indoor and we control the environment for them? So it's working for him. He's making around three crops a year. He would like to achieve the first one through automation. So others are like bonsai growers selling bonsai. So I wasn't like I was imagining like tomatoes, maybe weed, leafy greens, but I was surprised that there are so many diverse, and I don't want to be limited into one plant or other, because at the end we are looking about a data set where we want to know what plant likes, which environment, what gives them the best. And in order to learn all that, we need the best data set. So we need as much knowledge from as much experienced customers or growth setups, locations, diversity. I think that's the key here.

Harry Duran

38:30 - 39:01

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, sometimes you never know how people are using your system until you start to ask them and they create use cases that you would have never have thought of when you were creating the technology. And so, you know, the fact that you're mentioning bonsais and Saffron is really interesting. So, Juno, as we get close to the end here, you know, as a founder, you have to wear a lot of hats and you have to do a lot of things to make sure you keep the company growing and moving. So what is a tough question that you have had to ask yourself recently?

Junell Abdi

39:02 - 40:34

That's a tough question by itself. As a startup, I think the toughest thing is the chicken and egg issue. So in a way, we do like invest a lot time and our own, but in order for building up, we need like further on and marketing, we need further own investments. And finding investors is not an easy thing these days. And definitely in this year, I think specifically, everyone tells me, oh, if you just ask in 21 or 22, that would be simple and very easy. Some very other competitors, which started like, only in 2020, and they've been like, fully invested, some already went to bankruptcy. I think they targeted the wrong audience or something like that. They were too expensive as well. Luckily, one of the user came to register at Gaia and saying, oh, could we support that system as well? I know it's a competitor, but we want to replace it with Gea, something, which is a modular thing. But yeah, sorry, back to the question now. I cannot figure out any difficult question. Maybe difficulties on the roadmap, I would say.

Harry Duran

40:34 - 40:46

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's always challenges there. So I want to let people know where they can learn more about Gaia. And the website is gaia geia AI.

Junell Abdi

40:46 - 40:49

Yeah, it's G e I a.

Harry Duran

40:51 - 41:07

Okay. And we'll make sure we have those links in the show notes and we'll let you know when the episode is published and so people can visit that when the episode goes live. And then if they want to connect with you, we'll provide your LinkedIn information. Any other place you want to send listeners or viewers to learn more?

Junell Abdi

41:07 - 42:43

Yeah, I have some philosophical article, which it was one of the way when we were thinking exactly about these lights, I mean, they didn't turn off on sunset. But some other lights they turned off on the sunset and sunrise of the plants original location. Like we had king palm trees from the Caribbean. So they had their own sunset sunrise. But then there was an issue that we changed from the summertime into winter time, and we went back 1 hour. And I was thinking philosophically how the human is actually affecting also the light time of the plant and how we tackle this issue. So it came into implementation and changed the whole way how the system looks at time. So we translate the time between the plan time to the human control time, and that also was implemented. And it's a very tiny thing, maybe a programmatic point of view. It took us a lot to implement to make this translation and this complexity, but I was very happy to achieve that. And I think no one went into that far into precision automation. So even the 1 hour method.

Harry Duran

42:44 - 42:47

So where can people find that if they want to read that?

Junell Abdi

42:48 - 43:02

Yes, I will attach the article. It's on LinkedIn. Yeah. Perhaps some documentation on how they could start with kea registration for becoming a public tester.

Harry Duran

43:03 - 43:18

Okay, yeah, we'll make sure all those links are in the show notes. Well, I'm glad we got to connect. And it's always fascinating to meet founders and especially startups from all around the world because it's like there's, if it's not for, then if it wasn't for the conference, it'd be hard to know how we would.

Junell Abdi

43:18 - 43:18

I'm already.

Harry Duran

43:22 - 43:55

Yeah. So it sounds like, you know, you've got a lot of work ahead of you and a lot of, you know, passion for this specific area and helping farmers understand better how to measure, you know, exactly what's happening in their environment, because that's a big challenge for many of the smaller farmers that we speak to. And then we have conversations with and from the conversations I've been having at the conferences. So, you know, best of luck with Gaia. And obviously, as things change, if there's any new updates, definitely please let us know and we'll continue to share it as well. So thank you for coming on the podcast and sharing your inspiring story.

Junell Abdi

43:55 - 44:02

Thank you very much for inviting me to this important podcast, and we're looking forward to update you.

Harry Duran

44:03 - 44:05

Okay, thanks for your time, Janelle.

Junell Abdi

44:05 - 44:05

Thanks.

Harry Duran

44:05 - 44:06

Cheers.