Every machine,
on one page
A water pump is bought once and then works for years. Everything anyone needs to know about it, which oil it takes, how to start it, that it leaked last week, usually lives in one person's head. Famu keeps it on the machine, where whoever runs it can read it.
Petrol, 3.6 litre tank, about 1.1 litres an hour.
And one NGK spark plug. Written once, bought right.
Plus the farm's own words: fill the body, choke closed, two pulls.
Posted by the person who saw it, with a photo.
A machine is the purchase, kept going
You do not enter the pump twice.
When you bought the pump you probably recorded it in Capital Costs. The equipment register is built on that same record: tap From purchases, pick it, and it joins the register with the date and price you already agreed on. Buying something new? Add it here and it is recorded as a capital purchase too.
From then on the machine's page answers the questions the purchase never could: where it lives, what condition it is in, what it is worth today, when it is next due for a service, and what it has cost since you bought it.
What it runs on decides what Famu asks
A diesel tractor has a tank. A solar pump does not.
A tractor, a milking machine and a wheelbarrow do not have the same details, so Famu does not show them the same form. The one question that matters is what it runs on. Choose a fuel engine and the fuel, the tank and the fuel use appear; choose solar or manual and they are not there to fill in. Try it.
Make, model, year, the dealer and the warranty sit in their own section, and every one of them is optional. A wheelbarrow can be just a name and a price.
Only an engine gets fuel fields.
- Engine oilSAE 30 · 0.6 litres · check before every start
- Spark plugNGK BPR6ES · 1 pcs
- FilterHonda 17210-ZE1-517 · 1 pcs
Switch it back to a fuel engine and the fuel comes back as you left it. Save while it says solar, though, and Famu clears the fuel details, so a converted pump stops claiming a petrol tank.
The manual lives with the machine
Not in a drawer, and not on one person's phone.
Every machine has an About section. At the top, a note in the farm's own words: how to start it, what to watch for, who to call. Below it, everything else you would want to hand a new worker, as one row of equal tiles: photos (the serial plate, the wiring under the panel), manuals (the PDF, or a photo of the printed page), YouTube videos, and links to the maker's parts page.
Photos are shrunk to under 400 KB on the phone before they are sent, like every photo in Famu, so a farm on mobile data is not paying to upload them. A PDF manual can be up to 5 MB.
A worker can open all of it. The person running the chaff cutter is exactly who needs its manual.
The person who sees it break can say so
A leak noticed on Saturday should not wait for Monday's meeting.
Every machine has an Updates feed: short, dated posts about what happened to it. Each one is an Update, a Problem or Fixed. Workers can post, because they are the ones running the machine, and anyone can edit or remove their own posts.
The latest problem with no fix after it is open. It shows at the top of the machine's page, and the equipment list marks the machine with a red chip, so nobody has to scroll a feed to learn the pump is down. Play it through.
One open problem per machine is deliberate. A fix closes what was wrong with the machine, not one post. It is a shared notebook, not a ticket system.
When it is due, and what it has cost
The two questions the purchase record alone never answers.
A service is a rule: every 3 months, every 2 weeks, or every 250 running hours. Famu warns the farm before a date-based one falls due and again when it is late. Tap the tick when it is done and the clock restarts.
A repair, a jerrycan of petrol or a new seal is an ordinary expense that names the machine. Record it from the machine's page and it is already linked, and its lifetime cost adds up: what it cost to buy, plus everything since.
- Full serviceevery 3 months · last done 5 months ago2 months overdue
- Oil change & filterevery 250 hours · meter at 640in 110 hrs
The rules that keep it straight
Workers see the machine, not the money
A worker can open every machine, its specs, oils, manual, videos, service dates and updates. What it cost, who sold it and what it is worth stay with the people who can see the farm's money.
Reporting is its own permission
Posting an update is separate from managing the register, so a farm can let every worker report a problem without letting them add machines. Admins choose who can do what on the Roles page.
Your own posts are yours
Anyone can edit or remove what they posted. A manager can correct anyone's post; only an admin removes someone else's.
Nothing is sent to YouTube until you tap
A video tile is drawn by Famu. Only the tap loads YouTube's player, in its privacy-enhanced mode, and YouTube is never sent anything from your records.
Only your own farm's machines
A repair, a service, a manual or an update can only be attached to a machine on the same farm. The database checks that, not just the picker.
A name leaves with the person
Updates show who posted them. If someone deletes their Famu account, their posts stay, because they are the farm's record, and the name on them becomes "Deleted account".
What it does not do yet
Famu does not know how hard a machine works
An "every 250 hours" service is shown against the meter reading you last typed in, but Famu cannot warn you it is due: it has no way to know how many hours the pump ran this week. Date-based services are the ones that send reminders.
A problem posted by a worker shows on the machine and the equipment list, but nobody is sent a message about it yet, and a warranty about to end turns amber on the page without a reminder. Look at the list, or keep a date-based service on the machines that matter.
Earns its keep for
- Pumps, generators, tractors, motorcycles and incubators that several people use
- Machines with an engine, where the oil and fuel matter
- Farms where the workers notice problems before the manager does
- Keeping the manual and the how-to video after the person who knew it has left
Does little for
- Hand tools nobody services: a capital cost is enough
- Tracking a machine's hours automatically: Famu reads the meter you type in