About FINN

Built by a farmer, for farmers.

The short version

I’m Tom — a broadacre farmer in Jamestown, South Australia, running a mixed operation with my father. I’m also a self-taught programmer, and I got tired of the gap between what farm tech promises and what it actually delivers.

So I started building my own.

Why FINN?

FINN stands for Farm Integrated Neural Network. The big vision is a network of smart tools across the farm — guidance systems, weather stations, cameras, drones — all connected and working together with AI to make better decisions.

But the vision doesn’t mean much without practical tools that work today. That’s why the first product is Finn Guidance — a GPS lightbar that runs on any laptop for the cost of a $30 GPS module. It solves a real, immediate problem: getting straight lines without spending thousands on a proprietary system.

The philosophy

Every piece of FINN is built with a few principles:

  • Low barrier to entry. If a farmer needs a dealer visit or a training course to use it, we’ve failed.
  • No lock-in. Open source software, standard hardware, your data in formats you can read.
  • Built for the real world. Dusty cabins, dodgy USB ports, patchy phone reception. If it doesn’t work in a paddock, it doesn’t work.
  • Farmer-first. Not investor-first, not tech-first. Every feature exists because a farmer needed it.

The tech

For the technically curious: Finn Guidance is written in Rust — a language built for performance and reliability. The interface uses egui for immediate-mode rendering. GPS data comes in via NMEA over USB serial. Coverage data lives in SQLite with CSV export.

The broader FINN system is a distributed multi-agent AI architecture using Python, FastAPI, and local LLMs. But that’s a story for the blog.

Get in touch

Got questions, ideas, or just want to yarn about farm tech?

Or find me at a field day — I’ll be the one with a laptop cable-tied to the dash.