Gig East Source Showcase 2026

Contact
Daniel Lamm
Principal/CEO
Contact Dalinternationalllc@gmail.com

This project is supported by the US Japan Foundation, in partnership with Hamasa Tea Brokerage of Japan. The project goal is to explore the viability of growing and harvesting Camellia sinesis for the purpose of developing a domestic vertically integrated supply chain through agricultural and social-economic exchanges.

Contact
Dr. Ciprian Popoviciu
Directory, Center for IoT Engineering and Innovation
Contact POPOVICIUC18@ecu.edu

PITON, the Platform for IoT Open Networks, is an AI powered IoT platform developed and managed by ECU’s Center for IoT Engineering and Innovation enabling easy deployment and management of sensors, real-time data collection and analysis, and the configuration and management of workflow automations such as alerting and actuation. At The Source, PITON is used to instrument the greenhouse environments with sensors communicating of LoRa to monitor environmental, soil and operating variables to provide the visibility necessary to optimally control and cost crop management. ECU students had the opportunity to work directly with stakeholders to learn how to collect and manage requirements along with technology deployment and management. The CIEI team and ECU students, in partnership with RIoT and The Source team will explore the use of the PITON platform to expand the scope of the IoT solutions from production, to storage and distribution.

Contact
Steve Yates, P.E.
CEO and Co-Founder
Contact steve.yates@federant.com

Federant is deploying its Federon Base edge AI platform at The Source to demonstrate governed autonomous field AI operation in a real agricultural environment. The platform runs all data recording, analytics, storage, and visual dashboards locally on the device itself.

The pilot validates Federant’s core thesis: authority must live at the point of action. In agriculture, that means the AI monitoring your crops, managing your irrigation, or guiding your autonomous equipment stays governed, accountable, and auditable whether your connectivity is available or not. The cloud coordinates the fleet. The edge runs the operation.

Federant’s platform is horizontal by design, serving smart agriculture, defense, environmental monitoring, and remote property management on identical hardware. The Source pilot is one of five concurrent deployments across four verticals at three sites, all proving that governance for edge AI is an architectural requirement, not a vertical-specific feature. The platform is protected by 11 provisional patent applications covering approximately 95% of the governance architecture.

Contact
Toni Sperry
President and Co-Founder
Contact toni.sperry@podfarms.com

Pod Farms will install and test its new vertical channel system (VCS) with live crops in the Wilson greenhouse. This new hydroponic technology bridges the most commercially adopted hydroponic method, nutrient film technique (NFT), in a vertical set-up. Validating our growing technique is critical for supporting our early adopters and the development of our MVP.

We believe in making more farmers and growing food closer to the consumer all while maintaining sustainable agriculture practices. Growing food should be fun, and we hope to inspire the next generation of growers with our modular and easy to use equipment.

Please message us with any questions.