Equipment:Technology:In-Cab
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The precision ag technology available today is letting us run more efficiently, profitably and envirnomentally friendly. We no longer over or under apply inputs (like fertilizers, herbicides, seed, etc.,) and with auto-trac we maximize in-field efficiency therby burning less diesel. Machinery efficiency gains alone are often enough to economically justify the purchase of such equipment, but often the product savings (like in the case of evaluating section control on a sprayer) are gigantic and show that the technology can pay off in less that a years time. The KSU_Overlap.xls sheet is something that we used heavily to look at payback on this technology as we were deciding whether to adopt it.
We rely heavily on OEM and aftermarket electronics in the cab to control everything from steering the tractor to variable rate application of inputs.
Both tractors (2007 John Deere 8530 and 2003 John Deere 8420) and the sprayer (2004 John Deere 4710) have John Deere Auto-trac systems on them. This invovles a John Deere GPS reciever, a hydraulic steering control valve, a console in the cab and all necessary wiring and plumbing. We do all field operations (except harvest) with auto-trac and the john Deere systems consistently give us great accuracy (our guess rows between planter passes vary at the most by 2-3").
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John Deere Starfire iTC 12-channel, dual frequency GPS reciever.
The brown box on the right was John Deere's first console introduced in the mid 1990s. This box is still widely used today although it's functionality is limited for more complicated applications (like section control). The touchscreen on the left is the most recent consol offered from John Deere AMS. It if fully functioned with a large screen display. The GS2 is a powerful piece of equipment. For example, one GS2 can control three VRT systems and their associated different sections while data logging all of the information from these systems. At the same time it can control all steering aspects of the tractor or sprayer (even turning it around at the edge of the field) as well as log boundaries files and show other equipment information.For VRT control of two products on our fertilizer side of the operation we traditionally used 2 Raven 440's controlled by Compaq Ipaqs running Farmworks Sitemate VRA software.
In this picture the two identical Raven 440 controllers are shown on the bottom left part of the picture. Above them is an old John Deere Computer Trak 250 display and to the right are the two mounts for the Ipaq's.
Here is a close up of the two Ipaq's running SiteMateVRA looked like in running mode. Throughout the 1990's and early 2000's, only one company had the patent on simultaneously variably applying two products. They controlled the hardware side of things and used a proprietary file format so that they could extract $0.50/ac out of everyone that used their technology. As such the only way to have dual-product VRT at that time was two setup two single product VRT systems.Today the patent issues have been gone now for 4 or 5 years and almost everyone's software and in-cab hardware can accomplish multi-product VRT in the field. On our operation we are currently using an AgLeader Insight to handle our dual product VRT fertilizer needs.
The AgLeader Insight can variably rate apply multiple products, while also controlling shutoff sections and logging all of the as-applied data. The Insight is a work horse and rarely causes me any headaches.
Here is the brain center for the AgLeader Insight to do what we need it to do. It is sad that we can control our equipment and where we put product down in the field to the centimeter level, yet we can't clean up any of the wiring mess necessary to connect various systems.
Here is what our planter tractor looks like for much of the year. On the left is the GS2 and GS1 systems (the GS1 systems will be phased out on our farm in 2009). On the right is the AgLeader Insight system and then in the middle is my IBM Thinkpad X31 laptop with Kyocera celluar internet card. Having the laptop in the cab with me was even better than I imagined. Not only could I get a signficiant amount of office work done during the day, but it was also useful for fixing software/hardware problems that come about during normal operation. Although we have our telephone service through Alltel, my cellular data card is through Nex-Tech. Nex-tech has an EVDO signal on every tower in our area while Alltel has no EVDO service in the whole county. We would go completely with Nex-tech but our farm headquarters is three miles from the Nebraska border and Nex-tech's western Kansas coverage does not extend into Nebraska, hence we can't get a good signal at the farm location. 95% of the ground we operate has a Nex-tech EVDO signal, just not the area immediately along the KS/NE border.For 2009 we are discussing adding Auto-trac to the combines (we've been running yield mapping systems with GPS since 1998) as this system works much better with the introduction of the row-sense system. We are also discussing adding a Seedsense 20/20 system into the planter to better monitor what's going on with the units (how much down-pressure is on the units, better measurement of seed spacing and population, etc.,)
For handheld applications (mapping stuff on foot or on four-wheeler) we use the mil-spec Titan RH unit running Farmworks SitemateVRA. This unit allows me some flexibility for mapping applications as it's water tight, battery operated and is fairly accurate (about 12").
Here is the TitanRH. For more information see the Farmworks website.We also use three other GPS recievers as we have a compact-flash style, a Garmin 76 and a Trimble 105. All are WAAS based for their corrections and accuracy typically is in the 12" range, whereas the higher-end John Deere recievers are in the 4" accuracy range. The John Deere recievers also have electronic gyroscopes in them to correct for tilt that occurs in field operations.
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