By Mark Muckenfuss

The COVID-19 pandemic sent Daniel Howe’s focus from developing hi-tech trash cans to applying the same ideas to farmlands. 

Howe, a 2021 graduate of Cal State Monterey Bay, is the founder and owner of neatMon, an agricultural tech firm that provides monitoring tools for farmers. A computer science major, he was a successful participant in the Institute for Innovation and Economic Development’s (iiED) Startup Challenge Monterey Bay, winning the 2020 contest and parlaying that experience into a fledgling business venture. 

His CSUMB capstone project and proposal for the Startup Challenge was an app that monitored waste bins. 

Howe had seen the challenge faced by those maintaining the trash cans and dumpsters around CSUMB’s dorms, particularly near the end of a semester when discarded furniture and appliances would overwhelm the containers. He developed a sensor that would be triggered when the bins were full and send a signal to alert the maintenance department. 

The project was in the pilot phase when the pandemic hit. 

“My background was in agriculture,” said Howe, who had worked in the industry in Carmel Valley and Salinas. “I ended up taking this capstone project and applying it to ag. It opened up a lot of opportunities.”

Based in Howe’s hometown of Redding, neatMon installs various sensor networks that can provide farmers with information on soil moisture, air temperature, weather conditions, water pump pressure and even spray applications by farm equipment. The system can alert farmers when predetermined thresholds are reached or to unexpected emergencies, such as a broken water line. 

“If a customer wants to monitor a pump, our automated monitoring nodes will send the information to the cloud,” Howe said. “It can also send alerts to the user. We can connect a controller to the pump so we can shut it down.” 

In the instance where a water line is compromised and begins to leak, the ability to shut it off immediately can be critical. 

“You can imagine,” he said, “if you have a broken pipe on your farm, you could lose thousands of gallons of water in minutes. We can fix that.”

Howe has managed to attract customers in Oregon, and some large operations in Chico and Napa. A few Salinas Valley farmers are also on board, such as Lost Clone Vinyards in Gonzales and ROAR Wines in Soledad.

Adam Franscioni of ROAR Wines said the neatMon system is cheaper and more versatile than the one he previously used to monitor the citrus, wine grapes and avocados he grows. He’s only using it to monitor temperature but said he might add other sensors in the future.

“It helps us be more nimble,” Franscioni said. “We can set parameters letting us know when temperatures hit certain points. It’s really handy.”

NeatMon is also expanding its market beyond the United States. Howe recently established a presence in Bilbao, Spain. The market there, he said, is less technically developed than in the United States. 

“There are a lot of opportunities to get into industrial automation there,” he said. While most large U.S. companies have automated systems, “in Spain they’re still in the process of doing these automation improvements.”

Howe attributes the overseas expansion to CSUMB. Brad Barbeau, the former head of iiED, connected Howe with a business accelerator at Fresno State University. It was there that he met the contacts that led to being invited on a trade mission to Bilbao. 

CSUMB turned out to not only be a good choice for him, Howe said, it was the logical one. Having worked in the area, he already knew about the school. 

“And, when I was looking for a computer science program,” he said, “CSUMB had the only fully online course,” something he appreciated as a working man with a family.

His capstone project ended up being the blueprint for his business.

“I was impressed with the ability of the professors to figure out what I needed and work with me,” he said. “The whole organization was very supportive and I felt honored to be a part of it.”