Terms of Service

The agreement

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a binding agreement between you and Chopaka Labs ("we," "us," "our"), a company based in Okanogan County, Washington. They govern your purchase and use of our products and software — the PakaNode and PakaHome devices, the PakaNtrol mobile and web application, and the related cloud service (together, the "Service").

By creating an account, placing an order, or using any part of the Service, you accept these Terms. If you're using the Service on behalf of a farm or business, you confirm you're authorized to accept these Terms for that operation. You need to be at least 18 years old to enter this agreement.

Your account & your farm

The app uses sign-in through Apple or Google. We don't create or store passwords. You're responsible for keeping access to your Apple or Google account secure, and for everything that happens under your account while you're signed in.

A "farm" is the shared workspace where your nodes, readings, and alerts live. The person who creates it is the Owner. You can invite others and assign them a role:

• Owner — runs the whole operation: people, devices, and the farm itself.
• Manager — adds nodes, sets the thresholds, and acts on alerts, but can't manage people.
• Viewer — sees readings and receives alerts, but can't change anything.

Everyone you invite signs in with their own account. You're responsible for who you invite and for making sure they're allowed to see your farm's data. You can remove anyone at any time.

The hardware

When you buy a PakaNode, a PakaHome, a Pakage starter kit, or an accessory, you own that physical device outright. There's no lease and no subscription to keep it running.

The hardware is designed for the monitoring use it's sold for — frost and environmental sensing on small-to-mid agricultural operations. It is not rated for use in life-support, medical, aviation, or any application where a failure could cause death, injury, or severe property damage. Don't deploy it where a missed reading is a safety hazard.

The first device claim ties hardware to your account through a one-time factory token; after that, a device is locked to your farm until you release it. This keeps a node from being silently hijacked. If you sell or give away a device, contact us to release it.

The app & cloud service

The PakaNtrol app and the cloud service behind it deliver your readings, store your history, and send your alerts. The app is a free download on iOS, Android, and the web. There is no subscription to use the Service that ships with v1.

The Service depends on things outside our control — your home internet, your phone's notification settings, Apple's and Google's push systems, cellular coverage, and the weather over a LoRa link. We work hard to make it reliable, but we provide the Service "as is" and can't promise it will be available without interruption. See sections 5, 11, and 12.

Monitoring is a tool, not a guarantee

Our products help you watch conditions and warn you when something crosses a line you set. That's genuinely useful — but it is a tool, not a promise. An alert can be late, or never arrive, because of:

• A power loss, internet outage, or Wi-Fi problem at your house;
• A dead or low node battery, a blocked solar panel, or a damaged sensor;
• Cellular dead zones, airplane mode, or your phone's Do Not Disturb and notification settings;
• Delays or outages in Apple's, Google's, or our cloud providers' systems;
• Weather, terrain, or distance weakening a LoRa link;
• A threshold you set too low, in the wrong spot, or on the wrong sensor.

You are responsible for your own frost protection decisions. Use Chopaka alongside your own judgment, your own weather sources, and your own habits — not in place of them. We are not liable for crop loss, equipment damage, or any other harm that results from a delayed, missed, or inaccurate reading or alert. If a freeze night matters, build in redundancy and don't rely on any single system, ours included.

Acceptable use

Use the Service for its intended purpose — monitoring your own land. Don't:

• Break the law with it, or use it to harm, harass, or surveil other people;
• Resell, sublicense, or rebrand the Service as your own;
• Reverse-engineer, tamper with, or circumvent the security of our cloud, firmware signing, or device claim-lock;
• Probe, scan, overload, or attack our systems, or try to access another farm's data;
• Modify a device's radio in a way that breaks the rules for the US 915 MHz band it's certified for.

The v1 hardware operates on the US 915 MHz LoRa band and is intended for use in the United States only. Operating it elsewhere may violate local radio regulations — that's on you, not us.

Firmware & updates

We release firmware and app updates to fix bugs, improve reliability, and add features. PakaHome gateways receive signed updates automatically over Wi-Fi. A field PakaNode has no internet of its own — you deliver its updates yourself, by hand, over Bluetooth, with your phone acting as the bridge. We'll tell you when an update is ready; whether and when you install it on a node is up to you.

We don't promise any particular update, on any schedule, or that older hardware will receive new features forever. We'll give reasonable notice before retiring support for a device.

Pre-orders, payment & refunds

Checkout runs through Shopify, with PayPal and the usual cards accepted alongside it. Your payment details are handled by those processors — they never touch our servers. Prices are shown at checkout in US dollars and don't include any taxes that may apply.

Pre-orders reserve a unit from an upcoming production run; the Pakage is currently expected to ship in late 2026. We'll email you before we charge or ship anything. If a pre-order is delayed beyond what you're willing to wait, you can cancel for a full refund any time before it ships.

Once your hardware arrives, you can return it in resalable condition within 30 days for a refund of the purchase price. Return shipping for a change of mind is on you; if a unit arrived defective, it's on us (see Warranty). We ship to the lower 48 United States only.

Hardware warranty

We warrant our hardware against defects in materials and workmanship for one year from the date you receive it, under normal outdoor agricultural use. If a unit fails through no fault of your own in that window, we'll repair it, replace it, or refund it — our choice.

This warranty doesn't cover damage from accident, misuse, unauthorized modification, animals, flooding beyond the device's IP rating, or normal wear. To make a claim, reach out through Get in Touch with your order or serial number. This warranty gives you specific legal rights; you may also have other rights that vary by state.

Ownership & your content

We own the Service — the app, the firmware, the cloud, our brand, the ridge mark, and everything we've built. These Terms grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the app and firmware on devices you own, for as long as you comply with these Terms. We build on open-source software too, credited on our Open-source licenses page.

Your readings are yours. The sensor data your nodes collect belongs to you. We store and process it to run the Service, and you can export it as CSV any time. We don't sell it. See our Privacy Policy for exactly what we do with it.

Disclaimer of warranties

Except for the express hardware warranty in section 9, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory — including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, or non-infringement. We don't warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or that readings and alerts will always be timely or accurate. Some states don't allow the exclusion of certain implied warranties, so parts of this may not apply to you.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Chopaka Labs and its founder, contractors, and suppliers will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages — including crop loss, lost profits, lost data, or damage to property — arising out of or related to the Service or these Terms, even if we've been told such damages were possible.

Our total liability for any claim relating to the Service or your hardware will not exceed the amount you paid us for the product or service that gave rise to the claim in the twelve months before it arose. Some states don't allow these limits, so parts of this may not apply to you. Nothing here limits liability that can't be limited by law.

Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms as the product grows or the law changes. When we make a material change, we'll update the "Effective" date at the top and, where it matters, let you know in the app or by email. If you keep using the Service after a change takes effect, you're accepting the updated Terms. If you don't agree, stop using the Service and reach out.

Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Washington, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute that can't be worked out directly will be resolved in the state or federal courts located in Washington, and you agree to that venue. We'd much rather settle it with a phone call — reach out first and we'll do our best to make it right.

How to reach us

Questions about these Terms? We're a small shop and a real person answers.

Chopaka Labs · Okanogan County, Washington
help@chopakalabs.com