Final UPDATE!!! M2 Controls 325HP 4WD Tractor!!!, Running with no Corrections, Pass to Pass Explained, No time for WAAS, Mega Satellite Reception
Hello this is the final instalment for this project. Thank you to everyone reading along, hopefully you will have fun reading about my next two upcoming projects; Emlid to TSIP to Trimble Ez Guide 250, and External Radio Corrections for M2.
The Trimble 150 conversion was very successful. After an almost flawless summer of cutting grass and doing drainage with the M2 I decided to lend it to a friend who uses an EZ 150 for larger scale grain farming. After Combining he wanted to test it harrowing fields with his 325HP Stieger Panther III 4WD articulated tractor. Nothing like free Beta Testing!
If you look really hard you can see the Tallysman helical Antenna at the front of the cab. After installation, calibration and syncing with his phone to use a cellular base. I left to go Combining at another farm.
He started sending me pictures of how straight it was driving. The land is quite hilly and treed in places, they have had longstanding issues using GPS with WAAS corrections due to this, getting only 4 to 6 gps satellites max with many dropouts. Also the geostationary corrections satellites come in at a very shallow angle and are easily blocked on the north side of hills.
As you can see the M2 does not have a signal issue whatsoever, this screen capture was taken right beside a row of grain bins in a treed yard. 38 satellites not bad. But the next day I got a phone call with issues connecting the M2 to their phones hotpots. Needing to get the work finished they tried running without corrections and the results were very surprising. I told them next morning I would come update firmware to try to fix the problem.
The uncorrected M2 was running about 14cm Pass to Pass, better than WAAS that runs 20cm Pass to Pass with corrections 
my mind was blown. Also they did not have to remark or nudge the line even without the corrections. With WAAS you are doing this constantly each pass. Both the farmer and his Father were very impressed by the Emlid systems performance. I think the Emlid really has a quality algorithm for computing position even before corrections are applied.
Agricultural GPS is always stated in Pass to Pass Error. It is basically double the error of any single measurement. If your first swath is out by an inch one way, when you turn around for the next swath it could be out that same distance the other way in that same spot. This gives you “Misses” or “Strips” left behind. RTK basically fully eliminates this. There are various levels of very expensive pay to play correction services available to farmers.
This is an example of WAAS drift during Combining. Within about a minute I drifted over about 1.5feet. Usually with WAAS, if it is running perfectly I give it one foot to wander back and forth in the header. Unfortunately we cannot fix measurement issues with post processing everything is done on the fly and quality live position information is required.
Here are two more photos of the WAAS wave. It is really not efficient. If you loose a foot on forty passes, you have to make an extra pass. A combine usually harvests at 2.6MPH so extra passes are costly. Pretty soon after many acres you have wasted the time, energy and resources of 4 to 8% of your total costs using WAAS vs RTK. If you are driving by hand you might as well throw your time and money in a fire. Misses, overlap and over application add up quite quickly in time and extra expense in any area agricultural coverage work.
Thank you for those who have read to the end, I am very excited to see if i can integrate Emlid into more machinery.