Dusanek highlights innovation at ‘Spark!’ event

Dave Dusanek, founder of DigiFarm, explains how his company uses satellites orbiting the earth to get their accurate signals. Dusanek spoke about his innovative company at a “Spark!” Event at the Heritage Center one Nov. 12. (Photos by Kim Brooks)
Dusanek holds up one of the modus DigiFarm manufactures in Monticello.
On Nov. 12, the Monticello Heritage and Cultural Center welcomed another speaker as part of its weekly “Spark Talk” series, featuring local innovators sharing their unique stories.
Dave Dusanek of Monticello, founder of DigiFarm VBN (Virtual Base Network) offered insight into how his company started and how fast it’s grown in just 14 years.
“I’m just another farm kid from Monticello. I wanted to farm,” he said of his future after high school.
However, his father wanted him to attend college.
Dusanek attended the University of Northern Iowa and earned a degree in electrical engineering.
After college, Dusanek’s father, an area farmer, wanted to find out how to obtain better GPS for his machinery.
“So I got a little more acclimated with GPS. I thought, it can’t be that hard to do. I can give it a shot,” he said. “The goal was to build a GPS signal that we could broadcast in the area that was accurate, reliable, and provide enough coverage that we weren’t limited to our home farm, or a mile away, or a neighbor.”
It all started in 2010…
Dusanek started with R&D (research and development).
“It was just as much frustration as it was research and development,” he joked.
That fall, he had developed a working GPS system for one of their tractors.
By 2011, some neighbors had inquired about it and were also using it. Around this time, Dusanek hit the pavement to try and sell his product to implement dealers.
“Eventually news started to spread. I decided in 2011 that I could either make a career out of this or I needed to hang it up and just use it on our farm. I decided to give it a shot,” he recalled.
Dusanek explained that GPS systems in a cell phone are different than those DigiFarm relies on.
“Your typical iPhone or Android phone is going to be accurate to the tune of about 4-10 meters. You’re talking tens of feet,” he noted. “DigiFarm developed a system that is basically 1 centimeter accurate. If you wanted to drive something autonomously, you can’t be in the ditch or in the wrong lane. So we’re talking about a half of an inch or a third of an inch of accuracy.
“It’s what we call an RTK (real-time kinematic) signal; it’s a very very high accurate signal.”
He said there is one satellite circling the earth that provides GPS data for your cell phone. It takes all four satellites circling the earth. To provide that precise location and timing.
DigiFarm has purchased and operates out of the former REM building in downtown Monticello. If you drive by, you’ll see a couple of geodetically calibrated antennas on top. These antennas provide exact measurement positioning.
DigiFarm also has “hundreds of servers in racks in a data center that processes data and applies a whole bunch of very nerdy math,” shared Dusanek. “That’s how we get that very high accuracy position from.”
Throughout the country and Canada, DigiFarm has also installed physical base stations, which are basically antennas.
“We push the data from all of those base stations across the internet and the data center where all of our servers are at,” he said. “Our servers broadcast the data back out across the cellular networks into what we call a virtual base station that we put right beside the tractor. It’s just a virtual station that your tractor actually sees.”
From there, the tractor can steer and turn itself autonomously.
“Fast-forward to today, we cover most of the 200 million acres that are in corn and soybean production. We cover about 40-some states. We cover parts of Canada,” Dusanek said. “Everything that we do on our farming operation is automated. Our customers get in the tractor, they hit a button, and they go and that tractor drives itself, steers itself, turns the seed on and off, it turns the fertilizer on and off, it turns around at the end of the field; everything is automated.”
Today, DigiFarm also owns two additional companies: HPRTK and Traqnology.
“You grow your technology; you grow your footprint and you start looking for new opportunities,” said Dusanek.
HPRTK primarily services survey and construction. Traqnology is their lawn and turf management company, servicing golf courses and municipalities. In both instances, the equipment used in surveying and the mower used on a golf course is all autonomous.
DigiFarm also went from being a service provider to a business that also sells products.
“We’re a service provider in the fact that when you buy a DigiFarm subscription and you turn your tractor on, when it steers itself, you know it’s working because you’re getting your signal from us. We went from a service provider to the hardware business.”
DigiFarm makes its own cellular modems that go into a tractor, for instance, as well as Bluetooth modems, both of which are made right here in Monticello.
When it comes to innovation, Dusanek said, “Everybody has different gifts. You find what you enjoy and you go after it. What I say to everybody in our company is to dream big because nothing is ever out of reach.”