VisionDesign complete (stages 1-6), not built

FanLamp

The blue boom light you spray by at night, made to check every nozzle

Lights the spray fans like a normal blue boom light and, with a camera beside the LEDs, checks every fan along the boom every few seconds, so a plugged, half-plugged or dripping nozzle shows up on the cab phone with its number. Monitor and alert only: it never switches a section or a nozzle.

Who buys it: Farmers and custom applicators with 18-36 m trailed or self-propelled sprayers who spray at dusk, at night or early morning and have no per-nozzle flow monitor.
Why it pays: A plugged nozzle at 20 km/h leaves about 1 ha of untreated strip per hour unnoticed (est.); a 24 m boom kit is about $273 of parts (est.) against about $1,583 for a TeeJet Sentry 6140 base kit before any nozzle sensors.
Target price: $249 per lamp, $449 for a 24 m pair (target)
First-minute wow: 'Left boom, nozzle 17: fan gone' on the cab phone 3 seconds after the tip plugs, at night, with a picture of the gap in the fans.

See the CAD design Concept page

FanLamp concept: the idea and where each part goes — The concept. The CAD design is below, under Printable CAD.

What the research found

And how this design answers it

Per-nozzle flow monitors cost thousands for a full boom and only alarm at about a 20% flow drop → one camera checks every fan's shape, and the CAD report shows it sees a 3% width loss at 9 m and 9% at 15 m (est.)
A camera beside the boom sees the fans edge-on → the lamp sits 1.5 m behind the nozzle line on an arm; at 0.5 m it only checks out to 9.4 m, at 1.5 m to 16.2 m (CAD report)
One lamp per side misses the nozzles nearest the centre → each lamp is mounted 1 m across the centre line, so one pair covers a 24 m boom and 2 pairs a 36 m boom
Operators trust a steady rate on the cab display and stop looking → the alert names the nozzle, so it needs no looking
A bright boom light glares and draws 25-30 W → the LEDs strobe with the camera exposure (about 9 W total, est.)

Use case

Tip plugs with tank-mix residue, 22:40

OperatorFarm ownerCustom applicator manager

01Trigger: a 0.5 m tip on the left boom plugs with gel from a poorly mixed load
02Detection: its fan disappears between two full fans in 2 checks in a row (about 6 s)
03Alert: phone chime in the cab, 'Left, nozzle 17: fan gone', with the photo and the GPS point where it started
04Action: the operator stops, swaps the tip, and goes back over the 300 m strip marked on the map

Outcome: About 0.1 ha re-sprayed instead of finding a weedy stripe a week later (est.)

How it works

Architecture

01
Sense: a 12 MP camera looks along the boom while the blue LEDs strobe during each 1 ms exposure
02
Decide: per-nozzle columns found once at setup; each fan's width and brightness compared with its neighbours and its own history on the Pi Zero 2 W
03
Send: Wi-Fi to a phone or tablet page in the cab, no internet needed
04
Tell: chime plus nozzle number, photo and GPS point; a nightly list of nozzles to clean or replace

Hardware

Real parts, buyable today

Bill of materials: about $136 per lamp at qty 1, about $70 at qty 500 (est.); 2 lamps for a 24 m boom.

Block	Part	Why this part
Camera	Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3 (IMX708, 4608 px, 66 deg)	Enough pixels to give each fan its own column out to 16 m at a 1.5 m offset
Compute	Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W	Runs the fan check in the lamp and serves the cab page over Wi-Fi
Light	2 x royal-blue 450 nm LED stars with 15 deg optics + MEAN WELL LDD-1000H	Blue makes the droplets show at night; strobed with the exposure
Power	Pololu D24V22F5 buck from the 12 V light circuit	About 9 W total (est.)
Mount	50 mm square aluminium arm + 2 in square M8 U-bolts	Holds the lamp 1.5 m behind the nozzles, so fans are seen at an angle, not edge-on

Mechanical

Printable CAD

3 parts, generated from code and checked as closed solids. Pick a part to inspect it, or download the STL files to print.

See the CAD parts render

FanLamp printable parts, rendered from the CAD — Render of the printable parts from the actual CAD. Not yet printed or photographed.

Loading the CAD…

Real CAD · drag to rotate · scroll to zoomReal CAD · swipe sideways

Open risks we are working on

Daytime checking against bright sky and crop is untested; rev A is sold for dusk, night and early-morning spraying (T1)
Some labels restrict night spraying (temperature inversions), so the night market varies by product and region
Spray film on the window and boom bounce on rough ground may cause false alarms (T2, T3)
Deere, Raven and TeeJet already sell nozzle monitoring on new sprayers, and camera nozzle-check patents exist (FTO R1)
No operator interviews yet (gate G1)

Design stage only: nothing on this page is for sale. Specifications and prices are targets.