MartEye is the result of the fusion of two companies, HerdEye & Agricam.
Engineers, Ciaran Feeney, and Aaron Signorelli, along with UI/UX designer, Mark McGann, joined forces to develop technology to enable livestock marts to facilitate trade during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Speaking to That’s Farming about the start-up, which is based in the Portershed in Galway City, McGann, said: “We founded MartEye to help operate and sell livestock online after seeing the difficulties they were having on the RTÉ news.”
“We understand this space very well and wanted to create a product that would be affordable, easy to use and could be set-up quickly.”
“Our background is in ag-tech and vision technology, more specifically having founded another start-up, HerdEye, which uses machine learning to receive key health and welfare metrics on individual cows automatically.
The trio outlined consulted with mart owners at the early stages of the health pandemic to establish their needs along with the needs of the sellers and buyers and continue to conduct research daily.
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For extra speed of roll-out, MartEye partnered with Jamie Nolan from AgriCam.ie for the installation and maintenance of all the hardware. “Jamie’s knowledge of camera systems and installing them in difficult places is second to none.”
What marts do they cover?
In just a few weeks, the team carried out successful installations in Tullow, Dowra, Ballyjamesduff, Enniscorthy, Thurles, Macroom, Castleisland, Athenry, Ballymahon, Skibbereen and Bandon with more additions to be announced in the coming days.
Some key features of the service, the founders added, include free to try; fixed monthly fee or price per animal; a live high-resolution video; sub-second live audio and control over who can access the auctions and bid; marts can also link customers to auctions directly from their website or social media pages, such as Facebook.
Also, based on the data and research gathered over the last number of weeks, the team said it is busy working on a series of new updates to keep up with the “huge” demand. “We are in this for the long haul and feel we are only scratching the surface.”
Dual auctions
To facilitate to return of purchases to the ringside post-Jun 8th, MartEye will soon announce details of a new hardware system that will synchronise online bids with bidders around the ring.
Information
For further information about MartEye, see its Facebook page or website.
