About Chopaka Labs
A high mountain,
and the back forty.
We build private, owner-operated monitoring for small farms — the kind of eyes-on-the-field a big operation pays fifty grand for, in a kit that costs about two hundred. No code. No cloud subscription. No catch.
Founded 2026 · Okanogan country, Washington
The name
Chopaka means
"high mountain."
/ chuh-PAH-kuh /
It's a Syilx word — the Okanagan people's name for the peak that overlooks the Pasayten wilderness, right on the Washington–B.C. line. That's the founder's family-farm country.
We kept the name as a gut-check. Every decision we make has to be useful to someone who has watched the sun set over Chopaka for thirty years — not just to an engineer. If it wouldn't make sense to that person, we reconsider it.
Why we exist
Small farms were stuck between three bad options.
The tools to watch your land already existed. None of them were built for the grower with five to five hundred acres and a real budget.
Commercial ag-tech
CropX · Arable · Teralytic
Priced for industrial operations. The capability is real — the invoice is out of reach for a family farm.
Consumer IoT
WiFi sensors · smart-home kit
Tied to WiFi and somebody's cloud. It never reaches the back forty, and it quits the day the subscription does.
Open-source mesh
Meshtastic & friends
Genuinely capable and genuinely free — if you have the technical fluency and the weekends to wire it all up.
What we won't compromise
Plain-spoken competence.
Yours, not ours
You own the hardware and the data, soup to nuts. No vendor lock-in, no account that holds your readings hostage. The node abides whether we're around or not.
No subscription, ever
Buy the kit once and it works — day one, no monthly bill standing between you and your own field. We'd rather sell you a good box than rent you your data.
Reaches past the WiFi
Long-range LoRa mesh built for distance and dead zones. The far corner of the property is exactly where the frost shows up first — so that's exactly where it has to work.
No technical background required
If you can use a smartphone, you can run it. Capable tech doesn't have to feel like homework — we did the hard part so you don't have to.
Who's behind it
"I wanted my family's farm to have the kind of answers the big operations get — without the big-operation budget, and without handing our data to a stranger."
Shipping late 2026
Be there for the first frost.
The Pakage starter kit — gateway plus a field node — lands late 2026. Leave your email and we'll tell you the day it's ready, no spam in between.
We'll only email you about launch. Unsubscribe anytime.