#117 - SimpleSUB, What Are You Experimenting With?

This is Andy. Welcome, to episode #117 of the Sprinkling Nerd Show.

Today today you just get me and this is a little bit of an experiment. And I would like to frame this episode, around experimenting. So let's talk about that. I'm in my truck right now driving to my office. It is Friday, and I didn't have any, I had one interview queued up for this week, but then I had to postpone it so you get me again, and sometimes I've mentioned this before.

This is the hardest part of podcasting. It is relatively easy to speak with a guest, ask questions, be curious. It is completely different to talk into outer space alone, solo. It's actually much more difficult than you might think, and today I didn't have anything queued up because of that guest cancellation, so I figured I would just kind of do a little, almost like a.

Audio diary today. So I'm in my truck, I'm running an experiment and that's what we're gonna talk about, experimenting. I'm running an experiment right now because I have a brand new wireless laier microphone that I got on Amazon and I don't really remember why I got it. I just thought that my current lavalier mic, that's wireless just really.

It's kind of a pain in the ass, and it only had one mic. And this unit has two mics. It comes in a nice little carrying case, kind of like AirPods, and it's by a company called Holly Land. It's the Lark M one. So if this episode makes it live, it's because the audio quality that we are recording right now was sufficient enough to publish.

So this is going to be an experiment, uh, just to see if the audio quality is good enough in the truck. Because I've tried a few different microphones in the truck and I settled on actually a handheld microphone. The Audiotechnica ATR2100 is connected to USB to Lightning. Works pretty well, but it's a pain in the ass to have to hold a microphone, and there's a lot more background noise in a vehicle than you may believe.

Uh, it's actually not, it's not quiet, right? In a vehicle, there's a lot of background noise and it can muffle the voice. So hopefully if you're hearing this, it's then, then the quality of Thelarche one by Hollyland is sufficient. So that's my experiment right now here today, and I wanna encourage you guys to be experimenting.

And I want to ask you, what have you experimented on this week or maybe what have you experimented with in the last two weeks? And an experiment could be a new product, it could be a new way of doing something, could be a new way of trying to splice a valve a new way that you've never done it before. It could be pitching your proposal to a homeowner in a new way that you've never done before.

I'm, I'm a believer in trying new things, seeing how they work. Doing it again, making an adjustment. And that those little, those little changes over time compound. And after two years goes by, you can look at yourself and go, wow, I am, my business is completely different than it was two years ago. But it wasn't a shift, it wasn't an overnight shift, it was just little things.

Compounding over time can be transformational. So, This is my experiment here right now, and I want to tell you about a device that I experimented with this week. This is only day three of the experiment, and I came across, so I came across a wireless clamp-on ultrasonic flow sensor maybe a month or two ago.

It's called the simpleSUB, the simpleSUB flow meter, and. Uh, what it does is you can clamp it on a half-inch, three-quarter inch or one-inch pipe. It accepts CPVC, PVC, copper type L, and type M, only up to one inch. But all you do is clamp it on with wire ties. It has a cellular. Uh, card, if you want to call it that, a cellular built into it.

You simply turn it on basically, and it connects to the simpleSUB cloud platform right out of the box. And there's a couple reasons that this device, that you might want this device, and there's a couple reasons that it may not be what you want. However, I think it would be worth taking a look at. So the website is Simple Sub Water, I believe that's what it is, simple sub water.com.

I will check that when I get to my office and put the actual link in the show notes if I. If I just misspoke, simple sub water.com, the unit is less than $400 and then it's $5 a month and you can just strap it on any half inch, three quarter inch or one inch pipe, and you can record the daily water use right up to the cloud.

Okay, so if So, you could put this on your irrigation main. Absolutely. Right. If your client wants to know how much water they're using on the irrigation system, You can put this right on the main line if it's one inch or less. And I suppose if it's greater than one inch, you could just put in a section of one inch pipe and then clamp this on.

But so what the device does, is it, it totalize or it logs the gallons and then once a day it sends it up to the server. Okay. So the simple sub meter cannot find brakes in pipes. Because it's not really sending, it's not sending real time flow to the platform. It's sending Totalized flow for the day. Now you could potentially find a leak if your total for the day was more than you suspected it to be.

But it's really designed to, I think, Um, provide individual billing to apartment or living units that don't have their own, uh, water meter. Okay, so if you had water meter going into a building and then there was 20 subunits, but there was only one water meter, you could put this device individually on all the sub mains that feed each of the living units and then build at tenants individually for.

Their water usage without having to. Reach out to your local municipality, hire a certified plumber, put in the meter and create all of that extra billing. You can just simply strap this on, record the daily water use, and then send your, your tenants a water bill at the end of the month. But what makes this really easy is that there is cellular built into it, so you don't have to worry about.

Connecting to somebody's wifi, you don't have to worry about another gateway or a hub. It will connect directly to the cloud. It comes pre-provisioned. It's ready to go. You don't have to make a phone call when you purchase the device. They ask you specifically for the size and the type of pipe that you're going to be putting it on so that they can provision.

The meter before they ship it. And that's really handy because then they, they ensure that it is calibrated correctly for that specific. Pipe size and pipe type. So all you really do is have to clamp it on, and that takes, I mean, literally about 90 seconds to install it. So again, if you have a, a client, commercial tenant, commercial client, or even a, a residential client, and they ask you if there's a way to meter their water, Just for totalizing purposes, this could not be easier.

I'd highly recommend it. I'd highly recommend that you test it out, and it could be, well, I was just gonna suggest that it could be a way to learn the flow of all the zones, but that's really not possible because it only records water. It only sends water used once a day for all of the water used that day.

So it isn't going to send you, give you minute by minute. Uh, reporting. There are other devices that can do that. I have a Stream Labs device in my house that connects to wifi that is absolutely amazing. I'll probably need to record another podcast episode on that device. Stream Labs Water, I think that's what it is.

Stream Labs, water. And if you want. You know, minute by minute recording down to like a 10th of a gallon, it just clamps on and it couldn't be, it couldn't be easier. But you do need to have wifi, so you do need to have access to your customer's wifi and connect it up that way, where the simple sub, you just clamp it on, turn it on, walk away, and you are going to get the water use data.

So this could be an opportunity for you to maybe sell some extra services if you have commercial clients. That have a lot more indoor plumbing, maybe you could, uh, offer this to them, suggest this, uh, and I guess in the, at least try putting it on an irrigation system that you have, which has a one inch main line and does not have a flow sensor.

So of course I would always recommend putting in a flow sensor if you're doing new installation. But if this is a retrofit, you just clamp this on. And it'll pipe the data straight up to the cloud. Uh, hopefully I will be able to have Brad, he's the inventor and the founder of The Simple Sub, and he was a, he was actually a, a lead engineer for Raio for three or four years before he started Simple Sub.

Hopefully I can connect with him and invite him on the podcast to share his story. I think it would be fun to, to hear what it was like to create this product from. Scratch. And again, to me it's just an experiment. I came across the device a couple months ago. I reached out to Brad, uh, it was at the beginning of last week.

We had a Zoom call together. He explained it to me. I immediately bought one. He provisioned it, he shipped it, it arrived this week. And of course I had to install it that very day and it couldn't have been easier. Super simple. And you know, really, that's my, that's what I was experimenting with. This week.

There's a lot more that I was experimenting with, but that's what I can share with you right now because the other experiments are still in the experimentation stage. And I probably will make a video on this where I'll show you the device and some pictures of my installation, so stay tuned for that.

That'll be on the Sprinkler Supply Store YouTube channel, which is, uh, Uh, I think I actually changed the name. It's Sprinkler to Andy on, on YouTube, but I will, I'll make a video and post it there. So you can see in real, real life, well in video format what the device looks like. And I think we're gonna see a lot more of these types of devices and components come, too, come to our business.

You know, the days of having to connect everything with a wire, um, are, I don't wanna say they're coming to an end, but there's a lot more wireless opportunities like this. Coming our way, and if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. So I highly recommend adding more sensors to your system, collecting more data, and providing more insights and accountability to your clients where it makes sense.

Of course, it doesn't make sense for everyone, but I think commercially it probably always makes sense if you're putting in an irrigation system on a commercial property. And a flow sensor was not in the bid. Not in the spec. I would add one, and if it's a one inch size, I would put this on there and I would send your clients the exact amount of water that you are using.

I'd probably even sit down with them, have a conversation, talk about the water needs of the landscape, and probably put a budget together with the client and talk to them about their water needs and how green. They want their grass or which sections of the landscape are, are high priority, put together a water budget and then start sending them daily, weekly, or monthly reports right out of the simple sub.

It's totally possible it's here right now. You can install it, deploy it in just a few minutes, and it would be, it'd be fun to have you guys experiment with this and let me know. Let me know how it goes. So that's what we have here, guys. My two experiments for the day in the week one is this Lark M one Holly Land Wireless lavalier mic, that I hope the audio quality comes out because I just uncomfortably recorded this podcast in my truck Driving to Work.

It's also raining, so we're gonna have to see how, how well it does recording my voice, uh, on top of the rain. And then the weekly experiment with the simple sub. Give it a try. Let me know how it goes and let me know what you are experimenting with. I think it is so key to always be trying something new, and it doesn't have to be groundbreaking.

It could be something so small like you change the way your signature looks this week. It doesn't matter, but it's so important to do something new. Keeps your mind fresh, keeps you in the game. Always be trying something new. So that's all I have guys. I'm stopped at the light here. So now we get to test the audio at a complete stop with what should be total silence in my truck.

Have a great day, have a great weekend, and we'll catch you next week with an awesome guest that I have queued up that is gonna bring this podcast global. Cheers. Talk to you later. Bye-bye.