Machine control is one of the most rapidly changing areas in the excavating industry. Yet according to Randy Noland, Hemisphere GNSS’ VP of Sales, 80% of contractors have not invested in 3D machine control.
“When we looked at that 80% of the market, these were the real pain points: How hard is it to get the system going?” says Noland. “How long is it going to take me to understand how to use it? How easy is it to manage the data files? What features do I need?”
So Hemisphere GNSS decided to manufacture a machine-control solution that was both affordable and intuitive for small to mid-size contractors. They told Equipment World’s Bryan Furnace that their new GradeMetrix system is designed to offer the best return on investment in terms of features without becoming too complex for the average user. The program offers full 2D, 2.5D (infill), and 3D machine control, while using an open architecture that allows users to communicate and share files with different operating systems. What’s more, its simple interface is designed so that even less experienced operators can become proficient rapidly.
But the most eye-popping feature may be the price point. While top-end 3D machine control can be a substantial expense, Hemisphere sells its products at nearly half the price of its competitors.
“The fact that we manufacture all of our products ourselves gives us a unique position where we were able to build the solution and bring it to market at a substantially attractive price and open up that audience,” says Miles Ware, VP of Marketing and Global Customer Care. Hemisphere GNSS also offers a three-year warranty on its products, and pledges that its users will never have to pay a fee to upgrade the software or firmware.
For an in-depth discussion of Hemisphere’s offerings, listen to Bryan’s interview with the Hemisphere GNSS team here. You can also check out Hemisphere in person at CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2023 in Booth W-43906.
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Transcript
Bryan Furnace:
Hi everyone. Welcome back to Equipment World. I'm Bryan, and today we're here to talk about machine control because who doesn't want to talk about machine control? This is one of the most rapidly changing areas in the excavating industry. And here to talk with us today is a company called Hemisphere. You may not be familiar with the name even though there's a good chance you've used some of their products without knowing it. So we're going to go talk to the Hemisphere team about some of their product offerings and how it could potentially help you in your business.
So my first question for you guys is can you give us an overview of the Hemisphere product offering? What do you guys have to offer?
Miles Ware:
So when Hemisphere is offer for our machine control, we've introduced our GradeMetrix system. So our GradeMetrix system is a suite of hardware paired with our construction application software, and we're specifically targeting small to mid-size contractors and compact all the way up to full scale machines. Examples being dozers, excavators, loaders, scrapers, and track loaders and skid steers.
Bryan Furnace:
What is the advantage of using the GradeMetrix system over some of the, and we all know the big name brands that everyone likes to throw around, what are some of the advantages of going with the GradeMetrix system?
Randy Noland:
In a sense, Bryan, we're not really competing head-to-head with the large companies that have been in the business for a long time. They've done a great job evolving the technology. But even with all of that success, there's still about an average of a 20% penetration rate. So there's 80% of the market that has not bought yet. So we really feel like our focus has been kind of lowering the barrier to entry and that includes price and then the complexity of the system. So we feel like we've added the key software features that give the best ROI without making the system too complex and that allows us to offer the system at a much better price point.
Daniel Sass:
And I think one advantage we have is that we've spent a lot of time focusing on our hardware and cabling solution to make it as simple as possible. We have one product VR500 that has two antennas, a GNSS receiver and an RTK radio all built into one device that has a single cable that connects to the terminal for power and communication. And by trying to use as few cables as possible and have hardware that's designed to do as much as possible, it makes it easy to transfer between various machines. So if you have a dozer and an excavator on site, you can just transfer appliances very quickly between machines, which is one thing we've focused on and made a priority in our development.
Bryan Furnace:
So it does occur to me as a contractor, first of all, your statistic of only 20% market penetration actually really shocks me. I feel like as a user on the ground, it feels like that's much deeper into the industry. The second thing that really sticks out to me is talking about lowering those barriers to entry. I know as a contractor when you start checking out the price tag associated along with the logistics of going and getting this installed on my machine, this is a really daunting thing to step into. 2D machine control for a lot of guys is enough, but full blown 3D machine control. That's huge. So can you guys expound on what makes your system easier to get into? What are some of the things you guys have done to kind of lower that barrier?
Miles Ware:
A lot of the things we've done is that we took a total look at the solutions, the audience like we talked about, this mid-size contractor and what we've done is add Hemisphere has got over 30 years of developing positioning technology. So we leveraged all of our knowhow, our smarts on the technology, the fact that we manufacture all of our products ourselves. It gives us a unique position where we're able to build a solution and bring it to market at a substantially attractive price and open up that audience, that lane, make that lane really wide for that 80% that has yet to latch onto and take advantage of the technology.
Once we set out on that, then we looked at what are exactly the needs or the features, the functions that this audience can truly benefit. Not taking of approach of let's sell them as many bells and whistles as we can, but what workflows, what features, what options are truly those that we can put in front of this audience, they can leverage work faster, work smarter, and move from job to job?
So when you look at the GradeMetrix solution, we put a lot of time into the interface to make it very simple for a lesser skilled operator to understand it, to get rapidly familiar and proficient in it and go right to work. So it's very straightforward, complex. And then as far as the combination of the 2D and the 3D options we put in there, we've really simplified the use of transitioning, say a job or attached from a 2D to a 3D. We've simplified and support multiple file formats to make it easy to get the 3D design files into the system up and working. Like Daniel said, our hardware architecture, we minimize the cabling so there's less chances for something to fail, there's fewer cables. We've integrated the positioning, the radio, all the RTK technology in one appliance.
So again, typically a user can take a system out of a box in about six to eight hours, the system is on the machine calibrated and they're ready to stick it in the dirt and go to work and actually start benefiting from it. So when we looked at that 80% of the market, these were the real kind of pain points, how hard is it to get this the system going? How fast or how long is it going to take me to understand how to use it? How easy is it to manage the data, the files? And what features do we need? So we really think that these are those key points that really are impactful to this audience. And, really, when people get in the seat and get behind the GradeMetrix solution, they realize like, wow, I'm feeling that impact. This is really helping me day one, right out the gate.
Randy Noland:
When a customer purchases GradeMetrix, they are getting full 2D, they are getting infill design or 2.5D that requires no localization. They get full 3D, bringing in Localizations. And with all of that we are very open architecture, so we can add radios to talk to mixed sites, mixed GNSS sites. We also support open file structures so we can read in and convert the files so that we really play well with others, whether it's a mixed GNSS site or mixed fleets with different brands of equipment. This is a retrofit system that again, 2D, 2.5D infill design, full 3D, and from the very beginning we turned on all constellations. So there is no software upgrade fee, there's no firmware upgrade fee and there's no activation fees for getting the absolute best for performance that we can give you. All of that at that price point.
Bryan Furnace:
Just very quickly, could you guide us through some of the terms you guys are throwing around GNSS, RTK, when you talk about localization? What do these terms actually mean and why should contractors pay attention to these? What does it materially mean for the equipment?
Miles Ware:
So when we talk about some of those terms, when we talk about GNSS and the importance of it, the performance of the GNSS where most of our audience still refer to it as the GPS, now that that technology is expanded and there's so many more, there're all the additional constellations and satellites that you can measure your availability to get a high precision, highly accurate solution is very good. So where it really separates and it stands out the GradeMetrix and the Hemisphere technology is that our systems perform extremely well in really harsh environments. So when you get under the trees or up against the building up against a high wall or in a pit, or say you're doing a swimming pool and you got all the other houses in the neighborhood around the site that you're working on, having strong GNSS technology in these solutions, it basically dramatically reduces the amount of downtime that that solution would have because it can't calculate the accurate RTK or the accurate positioning solution.
We take it a step further because our solutions incorporate both the positioning and what we call the heading or the attitude of the machine. So we know the rotation of the machine. And that has a lot of inherent advantages, especially when you're doing, let's say, 2.5D 2D and some 2.5D projects where if you swing the machine, you can continue to work and track the machine without the need of having a really accurate GPS point.
When we talk about localization, one of the things where that comes into play is that when you start talking about working on these more complex 3D sites where you've got a model, we make it very simple to handle and bring in those localization points that basically create that boundary or perimeter around the site. And that's how we actually adjust the model so that we can align all the points. So you know exactly where that machine is on the site. We've really simplified that process so that once that surveyor or that site, whoever's managing those files for that site, they provide that localization data, it goes right in, we clearly display it, you can actually edit or amend it or add to the localization file from the machine. So we take out that complexity of the back and forth, go back to the surveyor, back to the machine. We've put a lot of that functionality so you can do that on your own and that reduces some of the costs.
And then when you start talking about 3D, typically and historically the cost and the price point to get into a reasonably featured 3D solution where an operator or an operation can take advantage of bidding and working on these more high-end complex jobs if you haven't had a way to get the equipment to actually be able to work on those jobs. And in the past a lot of those jobs were very, let's say, brand specific where if it was a site using Brand A, you had to have a Brand A system to even go by us fitting well with other brands and whether they've already got Brand A's base station or their Brand B machines. Now, our GradeMetrix customers, they can get in the game, they can get into those opportunities and they can come right on site and just seamlessly connect and go to work and take advantage of the technology right away.
Bryan Furnace:
I know we don't necessarily want to get into actual numbers, but from what I understand, the price point that you're looking at getting into a Hemisphere system for is substantially lower than some of the bigger, more well-known brand names.
Randy Noland:
It's about half the price. So you really can outfit two machines for the cost of one. You'd think well, okay, so what's the catch? What am I losing? This is number one or number two GNSS performance in all conditions. This is a full three year warranty on the display, the sensors, the GNSS, so there's no loss in that. The constellations, all the GNSS constellations, GPS, Galileo, BeiDou and GLONASS all are activated with the system. So it really makes it the strongest value play available in the market right now.
Bryan Furnace:
And I will say as a contractor, that's one of the biggest hurdles is the fact that in order for me to realistically step into machine control, you're going to need the base station, you're going to need the rover and then you're going to need to equip, everyone seems to start with the dozer, and it makes the most sense most of the time. But realistically, if I really want to go full bore into machine control, I should probably equip an excavator as well so we can start getting into doing some pipe work and some underground utilities. If you're telling me that I can now equip two machines for the price of what it would cost me to traditionally equip one machine that has a material impact to my difference and the capabilities that it gives me as a contractor. Now I can smoke by these guys that only have the one machine and they're having to get in and out and mess with the rover and everything. You're telling me on top of that I can actually get into design within my machine without having to get out and bounce between the rover. Did I understand that correctly?
Daniel Sass:
You can do a lot of designs from within the software for ramps and pads, slope pads, trenches, a lot of things you can design from within the software. Even if you do have, for instance, a topo from the rover, you can upload that and generate a 10 surface. So there's a lot that you can do from within the software itself if you don't have a design file.
Bryan Furnace:
So you've got a tremendous amount of capability and as the technology has gotten further along, prices are starting to come down and this is becoming much more attainable for contractors.
Miles Ware:
Yeah. And Bryan, one other thing I'll touch on is that, like you mentioned, hey, I'm an operator, I've got a dozer, I've got an excavator, we even have the platform structured so that if you're coming into this you can outfit, say you're a dozer, okay, get it all set up. We actually offer installation and wiring kits so you can buy the wiring kit for your excavator, get the sensor array, everything wired. We make access to the different machine types through activations. So you can get an excavator activation and you can take that terminal in your GNSS receiver, you can take it over to your excavator, plop it over to your other machine, go to work. And then as you start to reap those benefits and realize like, hey, I'm ready to go further in the game, then you can come back, you can get an additional terminal, additional receiver then you can fully outfit that machine.
But again, we looked at a lot of these scenarios for this audience, we really put our heart into the fact that we wanted to put something that had a lot of value to bring this audience into the fold, this 80%, give them a realistic high-end solution without breaking the bank and it has some significant value to them.
Bryan Furnace:
Couple follow up questions. First is you've kind of touched on it, but if I have competitive base stations, just to clarify for everyone, this system will integrate with those other base stations. I don't have to go by a parallel system that's running alongside my concurrent GPS system?
Daniel Sass:
Yes, we support most of all of the standard RTK formats, RTCM, things like that, some of the proprietary ones such as CMR. All of our receivers have internal 400 megahertz UHF radio, so we can receive RTK over radio. We have serial ports available, so if you want to pop in an external radio in case you have a proprietary 900 megahertz, that's easy. We support in NTRIP, of course. So if you have a network base station, we give you all those options so you can work with the existing base station that you have. And if you don't have a base station, we also offer several different base station options. So we can offer you one or if you have one, it'll work.
Bryan Furnace:
So regardless of where I'm at in my GPS journey, you guys have a solution that's going to be able to help me out?
Miles Ware:
Absolutely, we do.
Randy Noland:
I would also like to add that we do have some customers that have perhaps a legacy base station running two or three other machines. We can plop our machine onsite, be compatible with that. But typically the legacy base stations, they paid quite a high price and these are GPS only or GPS GLONASS only. So it actually cripples our system because the machine is ready to handle the other constellation, the other signals. So often we find people, after a period of time, they'll replace the legacy base station again with a very attractive value proposition with all signals so they get the full performance out of the Hemisphere system. Which then will outperform as far as GNSS performance goes than the legacy machines that are on site. So it is a very flexible open journey and I think we fit into all of those pockets.
The owner operator, the small to mid-size contractor, we just feel like the technology is so good, it's been around a while, it is endorsed, the benefits are well documented, it really helps kind of pave the way. We're kind of at a tipping point where we feel like the next wave of technology will be accessing the market that's not purchased yet. So we say our competitor really is the non-user that that's the people that we're going after and then established users of GNSS, they typically don't outfit all of their machines. So we are offering a system that lists them outfit the older machines or the machines that they didn't make the investment for full 3D the price point and the value is such a point now with Hemisphere and GradeMetrix that we're seeing people outfit the machines that weren't outfitted before.
Bryan Furnace:
This is one of my favorite topics of discussion because as an end user seeing the difference in efficiency, in your productivity, that this sort of technology has been huge. And to now see it coming down in price, becoming more accessible, seeing even the strides in technology like you guys were mentioning, the fact that anytime you're around trees it was an issue. We just knew as operators you're going to have to freehand it and do the best you can. And to see how the technology's progressing to eliminate some of these kind of blind spots, this is awesome stuff. This gets me excited. So my final question is how can people get ahold of you guys to possibly schedule a demo or inquire more about your product?
Miles Ware:
There are a couple ways. We have a website, GradeMetrix.com. It has a wealth of knowledge on the different solutions, all the benefits and features. You can also contact us through HemisphereGNSS or HGNSS.com, as well our Hemisphere website. We do have the ability, you can just give us your high level information, I'm John, this is where part of the world I'm located in, this is a solution I'm interested in. Then it'll send that information to the appropriate person in our business development group and they'll be happy to reach out and talk to you. And then we do have a network of established dealers that are actively selling and deploying GradeMetrix solutions. We can get anybody that's interested aligned with any of our established dealers, get them a demo, get in the seat and really check it out.
Bryan Furnace:
Well, thank you again to the team from Hemisphere for taking time to talk machine control with us. There are some exciting things happening. And one of the most exciting things is as this technology gets more and more mainstream, the prices are beginning to fall. It's becoming more and more attainable for the smaller contractors so that you can now go back to competing with your bigger brother out there. You're not getting left behind in the dust due to the fact that there's just such a financial hardship when getting into this sort of technology. It's exciting times and I'm really excited to see how the next 5 to 10 years shake out. So that being said, thanks for watching and we'll catch you guys next time.