Store It Cold with

Cool CoolBot News!

APR 2012 Just trying to keep up with the normal spring rush of orders! VERY happy to welcome Aaron Munzer on board with Store It Cold!!! He's worked on our farm for many years (I think since he was 15?) So now, 9 years later, we are happy to have him helping us in a COMPLETELY different capacity. Not nearly as dirty. Aaron is helping with phone and email questions during the busy season. Say hi, if he answers your call!

FEB 2012 A little late in reporting this, but we're SO PROUD to receive an award from Sustainable Tompkins for "Energy Efficiency" in their annual "Signs of Sustainability" award series. CLICK HERE to see what it's all about (we're the first award listed). Read more about the Sustainable Tompkins program!

JAN 2012 Link to USAID info sheet about the CoolBot! Getting to work with USAID and the UC Davis has been terrific for us. It's opened up steadily increasing international sales which are especially nice because the orders come in big "chunks".

(If the link above doesn't work, you can cut and paste the following address into your browser windown: http://hortcrsp.ucdavis.edu/main/media%20page/IS_Coolbot.pdf).

OCT 2011 See the September update just below!! We've broken ALL sales records this fall, shipping out 750 of the new CoolBots in just weeks! We've sold more this fall that we did our first 2 years combined (when no one believed this could really work). The new version of CoolBot released in September is fully performing to expectations, and YES we still ONLY make CoolBots here in the US! there are just more of us making them now to keep up!

SEPT 2011 **Finally started shipping the NEW CoolBots** It doesn't look like the one in the picture above now, or the one in the youtube.com installation video, but it works the same way and the external wires are of course functionally the same and connect to the air conditioner in exactly the same way, so the youtube video is still fine (but I will update it ASAP!)

It's been five years since we started shipping CoolBots and although we kept doing incremental upgrades, firmware, then a sensor change, mild board changes, we had never done a complete re-tooling of boards, enclosures, connectors and sensors all into one new package. Now Five years of pent-up changes have all exploded into reality in one monstrously awesome new CoolBot!!! A lot of the changes are hard to see, they are inside, but the enclosure is completely different - much sleeker, smaller, and STRONGER. All wires now connect to the BOTTOM of the CoolBot so water can never drip into the enclosure. You can also access them from outside the coolbot (you shouldn't need to, butÉ it's now much easier to if you DO need to!) We also removed all physical buttons from the coolbot and switched to "touch-screen" type buttons. They can NEVER fail or be effected by water. We also changed how we make the board so it's easier to waterproof more completely (We still don't recommend that you operate your coolbot under water, butÉ it can handle it even better now!) I'll update the pictures and youtube video once we get caught up on orders!!

FEB 2011 - Gearing up for the spring rush of US and Canadian orders! We have a good inventory built up, so we don't expect any shipping delays this year. We shipped lots more CoolBot to expand on last years India project which has now collected a ton of data on variety of crops and temperatures in multiple villages around the country. Although we sell thousands of CoolBots in the US, somehow the dozens we've sent out to various international aid projects are the most exciting! The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that up to 40% of fresh produce in developing nations rots on the way to market due to a lack of post harvest care. The CoolBot is a fraction of the cost of a conventional walk-in cooler and uses half as much electricity. Projects have built CoolBot-coolers out of straw, rice husks, even Papyrus!!! The idea that we can (help) increase the net amount of fresh produce in some countries by so much is terrificly stimulating!

OCTOBER 2010 - The summer Farmer rush is over, but we're in full-swing shipping to Hunters -- actually shipping more per week to hunters than we were to farmers (but it's a much shorter season). This was a market we hadn't anticipated at all until a couple years ago! We've also started shipping our coolbots through "Fulfillment By Amazon"... it's a neat program. We are not selling coolbots on Amazon yet, but having them handle the shipping now that we're selling so many per week has been a huge relief to us.

MAY 2010 - Just in time for the rush of summer farm orders, we're now shipping the improved 5th generation of CoolBot hardware (starting from the first commercial units that went out in 2006 - there were dozens more before that!). Besides internal programming improvements and a (light duty) internal surge protector, we now use full epoxy coating on all sensors making them more robust. *You should still use an external surge protector of your own because CoolBots are NOT immune to lightning strikes. We get at least one call a month from people with lightning strikes. I think this is because home-built cooler-outbuildings are not as well grounded as houses and the lightning ends up going right through the circuitry... Surge protectors seem like such a cheap and easy solution.

APRIL 2010 - There are now three demonstration CoolBots operating successfully in different parts of India with full monitoring on energy use, temperature, relative humidity and quality of the stored product. So far everything is working well even as temperatures in Delhi hit 113 degrees F! (Actually it should be noted that the Delhi unit was set to 35 def F (2 C) but the unit is holding steady at 37 (3 C) - it just can't get any colder). I think it's because the cooler is in direct Indian sun (no shade!) and there are some 3 tons of stored product in there. The A/C unit is sized "just right" to our specs (which didn't take India into account). There is also a small amount of visible daylight around the A/C unit. ...I'm still calling this a success.

FEB 2010 - THANK YOU to a large multinational corporation for funding demonstration Coolers for poor farmers in India and Thailand using CoolBots! The first of five coolers they've built is BEAUTIFUL and now housing 3 tonnes of Potatoes! More to follow with pics in the next few weeks! This is a terrific use of CoolBots and we're so happy to be a part of the project!

JAN 2010 - We are so proud to have been included in a new USAID project funding demonstrations of CoolBots for small farmers in India, Uganda and Honduras!!! The project will use CoolBots operating coolers built out of local materials and will explore the use of solar panels. We look forward to supporting this project any way we can and will provide regular updates and pictures once the project actually starts up!!

CoolBots news from September 2006-December 2009 is not shown to save space

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