In order for farmers to ensure their electric fences are running, they have no choice but to manually check by hand. It's a nuisance and sometimes painful, but there was simply no better way to prevent their cattle from running off until Insulights was invented by an Iowa entrepreneur.
Photo Credit: Insulights
Even people who live in agricultural states, like Iowa, never truly think about the fact electric fences need to be constantly checked to ensure they are operating properly. Because of this, they are also unaware of how those fences are checked. It's not fun.
In order to check electric fences and ensure proper operation preventing cattle from escaping, a worker will manually walk each field and touch the fence to verify an active current. Not only is it a nuisance to make the frequent hike, but no one is thrilled at the idea of manually checking and sometimes shocking themselves. An Iowa entrepreneur believes he has the solution.
Bill Brown, the founder of Insulights recently came in 2nd place at the John Pappajohn Iowa Entrepreneurial Venture Competition for creating a solution. The invention is a new kind of electric fence insultator that can attach to metal posts or even wooden posts, but it has some clever electronics built in.
Each insulator designed by Brown and his team has an LED built in. Because the electric fence already has a power source, the LED connects to the electric fence with a simple circuit. If the fence is on, the LED is visible matching the pulse of the fence, if the fence is damaged or malfunctioning, the LED is off. Brown told us the light is visible from great distances preventing manually approaching the fence at all.
It's one of those elegant solutions that makes you wonder why no one designed it earlier and Brown tells us it's the only product of it's kind on the market that eliminates the manual testing of electric fencing, which is a big time saver.
The LED is visible from a great distance, so farmers only need to take a quick glance to make sure their electric fence is operational. Brown told us the insultaor is colored blue to deter wild animals as well. Brown told us the USA-made product works with all kinds of wire, even braided wire.
You can learn more about the company here.
Photos of Insulights
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