Moving shipping containers is heavy work. Moving a traditional industry into the digital age is a different kind of heavy job. Software development agency GNAR took on the challenge and built an ops management platform for RMS Intermodal, one of the largest rail yard operators in the U.S. Their IoT solution gave RMS a data-driven view of their operations for the first time, resulting in a whole new definition of “efficiency” for the company.

Serendipity manifests a new idea

It all started at a wedding. GNAR Founder Brandon Stewart found himself chatting with Adam Gray, the son of RMS Intermodal’s President, and the conversation turned to RFID tracking. Brandon had done some work on an...

Kyle Seaman is Director of Farm Technology for Freight Farms, producer of pre-assembled, IoT-enabled, hydroponic farms inside repurposed freight containers.

What is Freight Farms?

Our flagship product, The Leafy Green Machine (LGM), is a complete, commercial-ready, hydroponic growing system assembled inside a repurposed shipping container. Each of our 100+ farms is connected to an IoT network built on Heroku.

Tell us about your stack.

We’re running the open source version of the Parse server on Heroku. Our stack is mostly JavaScript: MongoDB along with a Node.js API. We also use Heroku Postgres.

Xively is a core component of our stack. We use the Xively add-on to sync our Heroku apps...