How do you plan to communicate data from one phone to the other?
Also, for the price, just get two M2’s, and portable power sources and be done. Don’t get me wrong, I like to tinker but you are going way deep in the weeds with this one.
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I think there are many ways to do it. Data streams between phones are a challenge,but many apps have already tackled it successfully. In most cases, it’s done by sharing data in the cloud. But I’d imagine opening a port on a router and doing direct IP calls between devices, or saving the data stream on another local device that shares. If all else fails, almost everyone has txt messaging. It’s not a lot more than an API call, an ID marker of some kind, and a few permissions.
I think you are assuming I would be doing this for myself. That isn’t the case. For the time being I have what I need with a Garmin Glo and my two M2s.
But I have spent a lifetime doing weird unconventional things for the fun of it and for the personal satisfaction I get from helping others. (I am absolutely certain that you can understand that or we would not be chatting.) Once in a while I’ve even made some money doing it. Over the years I’ve also sold a few inventions to bigger name outfits who either didn’t like the competition or saw an opportunity.
In this case, I am envisioning a free app for other people who want an improvement in the performance of their phones gps system and already have an old phone laying around that they can use as a base. I’m not certain of course, but I’m pretty sure such an app might even be popular. For the record, I’m NOT interested in making money doing it. I don’t need the income and I don’t want the headache that goes with selling things for a profit. After a lifetime of projects like this, I know full well that most of them fail or stall. But I have also learned that a few succeed and that these few successes make up for the dozens of failures that die. Hopefully, that helps you understand my motivation.
Like many ideas I have, the process of developing them begins with an evaluation process that identifyies barriers and potential solutions. The biggest barrier I see right now is the correction process. If I can’t figure out how to deal with that on a smart phone platform in a promising way, the idea dies. My instincts tell me that the first step is to understand how it’s down now.
Make sense now?
I see the vision but i think the work/reward crossover is making a cool case the m2 and tallysman snap into with integral wiring.
By the time your there its RS2 time.
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That’s alright with me. Learning is my biggest hobby. So it will be a fun trip no matter what the outcome is.
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This is no doubt! I have been getting paid to figure out tech and learn for the last 20 years and can’t imagine doing anything else.
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I think you win. I am probably going to abandon this idea. I’ve thought about it off and on. I still like the idea of doing it, but I got involved in a few other big projects that have hijacked the agenda.
For one, I bought an old Bridgeport milling machine. It needed (and still needs) a ton of work.
For another, planting season came and went and left me hankering for a way to turn individual rows on and off from the tractor cab…
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AgOpenGPS
It has section control, u turn, auto implement raise and lower, contour, customization, easily achievable sub inch steer accuracy, path record, uses easily obtainable and substitutable parts.
I even got it working on the lawnmower.
Its absolutely brilliant
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I’ve got a motorola one 5G UW and it has the GPS/GLONASS receiver. I’ve PP the data before using Javad Justin 3 and best position accuracy for 15 minutes logging in open sky conditions is 0.2 meter. Pretty neat I think. I haven’t tried with a PPP service yet.
I don’t need it for those things and may never need it for that. Before any control program can do any of those things, I need equipment that can handle it.
I don’t have autosteer in my tractors yet.
I don’t have any way to turn off planter rows
I don’t have even have any ability to turn off sprayer sections.
I am NOT buying a 75k planter
I am NOT buying a 125k tractor
And the list goes on and on and on.
I just want manual guidance that actually works. And SOME DAY, MAYBE I might want to add autosteer to my current or equal value future equipment. But it won’t happen if I have to buy newer better equipment to get there. I got the Emlid stuff because I can’t afford the fancy ready to go stuff. It’s really just as simple as that
I would be absolutely thrilled to be able to add a bank of 11 manual switches to manually turn off planter rows. But frankly, I’d be really happy to just be able to turn off rows 4 & 8 to make sprayer rows.
I always meant to ask you but keep forgetting. Does your lawn mower have autosteer?
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I think you need to figure out exactly what you want, what you first describe is sectional control. You also want manual guidance, and want later upgradability. The program I have described is all that you require in the same package and the software is free, works with your existing RTK investment too.
Yes, my lawnmower has had auto steer for quite some time, I have even posted pictures for you in the past. It saves considerable money and time at that level. When I farm with guidance it saves even more due penalty of input costs, and the larger machines higher fuelling rates. There is strong financial reasoning for guidance systems current broad adoption in agriculture.
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I feel like perhaps I offended you in some way. That was not my intention. I apologize if I did.
I think you need to understand that I am a very small farmer. I only farm 100 acres. Input savings would never justify bigger newer eequipment. But it might justify my M2 system costs using my phone for screen guidance.
Yes, I saw your lawn mower way back when, but I don’t remember seeing how the autosteer itself actually worked. Not that I want to cut my grass that way. I mow a lot of grass - maybe 3 or 4 acres - but it’s filled with objects and a big pond that would destroy my emlid system completely and my mower with it. My target tractor is the open station Deere 5210 that I use for spraying and spreading fertilizer. I successfully used it this past spring and summer using manual guidance and the Android Field Navigator App. I’m actually quite happy with how that worked. But if I can somehow get that working with Autosteer, then my next target would be my bigger Deere 6420 that I use for planting, plowing, disking, & cultivating.
My interest in the Emlid is not about saving money. It’s about getting rid of all the pacing and red flags to mark sprayer and fertilizer paths, and hopefully someday also making those enviably straight crop rows. Doing something fun and cool at the same time is wonderful.
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Don’t worry I do not offend easy.
Farming has very thin margins, especially during a drought like this year. Your Emlids may not be about saving money, but they can make sure you do not lose any more than you have to.
Current input costs for wheat are around $270/acre*100acres= $27000. Auto steer with rtk would save 10% minimum over hand steer, so $2700 a year savings. Not a bad cheque.
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Unfortunately, I just don’t believe that is really achievable on my farm. Your numbers are consistent with what big farmers around here claim. But they can do lots of things small farmers cannot do.
I don’t (and can’t) meter my inputs in small quantities. I buy a load of fertilizer based on a calculation of acres and soil needs. The supplier puts that into a rented applicator set to the desired application rate. If there is any left over, I reset the meter to 1/4 rate and it gets put on wherever I think my field needs it most. I can’t save it till next year. If I undercalculate, or the metering system fails, I do without. I can’t afford to go get more. Fortunately, it usually works out almost perfect. Same goes for spray-on chemicals. Neither one can be returned. And I’m just too small a farm to be able to save inputs like fertilizer and mixed chemicals for next year. I do save some unused concentrated chemicals in jugs. But again, I can’t see how autosteer could improve that.
It is true that seed is different. For small farms like mine, it must be purchased in units (bags). So if I calculate that I need 31.25 bags of seed, I have to buy 32 bags. Unlike chemicals, I can (and do) save what is left for next year. But during the seeding process, I can’t be more efficient than I already am without row shutoff. As far as I know, there is no electrical shutoff for my planter (a Deere 1780 6/11). If I want row shutoff, I have to climb down from my tractor and manually declutch or clutch the rows. If I could get electric shutoff, I’d be on it yesterday - I hate climbing down and up from my tractor to turn on/off rows manually.
It might also help to understand that farms like mine are square. I do not have sloughs or margins to avoid or screw up my application calculation.
There are really only two places where I believe I could save with autosteering - fuel and time. My time is worth nothing so that leaves only fuel. My fuel bill is around 3 grand for the year. At 10%, that’s $300. But even so, not all of that is savable. Plowing is my highest fuel usage and gps won’t affect that - I just follow the trench. Disking and cultivating are next biggest, and I can imagine some savings there due to reduced overlap and less turning. But even so I doubt I could save more than $150 and even that is already savable with manual guidance.
So if I am totally honest with myself. Autosteer is simply not a financially viable goal on my farm. Frankly neither is manual guidance.
But the truth is that I do love my manual guidance. It’s awesome to be able to skip passes and come back later. And I love not have to lay out and pace flags.
And the truth is that I’d love to have autosteer if it can be done at low enough cost to be absorbed. It really would be awesome to use and enjoy. Unfortunately, the hardware cost is scary.
Now, if you know how I could develop a gps guided groundhog or deer or wild turkey or grackle or rabbit control system, THAT would be a REAL money saver. I prolly lose 10% of my yield (not inputs) to predation! Grackles are the worst of all cuz they pull the baby plants so they can feed the germinated seed to their ravenous nestlings.
Just for the fun of it throw your particulars in this, remember the $1500 yearly subscription does not apply to you because you have your own base. This will show you the savings just between waas and rtk.
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This is a great web app. I’ve never seen anything like that. Going through the choices helped me see why you and I might have different perspectives.
I think it starts with our crops. You grow wheat. I grow corn (on 30 inch rows) and soybeans (on 15 inch rows). The tires on all of my equipment is setup for the 30" spacings. You have crop trampling. I have what I will call crop guidance. Once my crop is in the ground, I just follow the rows for all subsequent work. Even the headland turns follow the sprayer rows from the main field sprayer rows to the headland sprayer rows and back to the main field sprayer rows.
Most fertilizer application is done before planting. I rent a 50ft Spreader because my fields are all 300 ft wide.
The land where my farm is located was laid out in the old French Colonial method (long and narrow), not in sections and quarters. Farmers out east here don’t know what a section or a quarter is. They only understand acres and hectares. Your program would not even accept 0.1562 sections. (LOL!) My 300ft field width makes preplant spreading a perfect 6 pass operation. I rely on cultivating to blend the fertilizer passes over time. It’s not possible to do partial passes anyway.
All my planting is currently done with marker disks on long arms. Each planting pass creates a marker line for the next pass. For planting Soybeans, I turn off rows 4 & 8 manually in order to leave sprayer tracks in the field for every 3rd pass. That way, I don’t drive on planted beans. So I don’t waste bean seed or the inputs they would otherwise consume.
My Emlid gps system was working this past spring, but I only used it for spreading fertilizer. I didn’t use it for planting. I reasoned that I could watch what it was doing but would be dead in the water with a total mess on my hands if it didn’t work. So I used my regular marker system to guide me, and then I watched the way the GPS system worked and how it might change things. I think it will be a problem at row starts, but that is a separate problem that warrants a separate discussion.
Here is a photo of my bean crop this year on one of my fields that shows the sprayer rows:
If you look closely, you can also see the individual 15" bean rows.
My sprayer is setup to exactly spray 3 planter passes. So following the sprayer paths results in exactly 3 passes sprayed with zero overlap. Technically, there actually is 7.5" of overlap, but the spray on the 7.5" overlap is half rate so it takes two passes to cover it anyway. It’s just how the nozzle system is designed. My sprayer also has three sections controlled from the tractor seat so that addresses odd passes (non multiples of 3) at the field edges. I also do three headland planting passes at the ends of the fields so it’s really easy to just spray them separately and then turn the sprayer on and off at the row margins which are super easy to see because they are always at right angles to the main rows. There is no need for foam markers and the like. I just follow the sprayer tracks. For beans, I usually apply a little foliar fertilizer at the same time as spraying for weeds. It’s a tank mix process. Once it is in the tank you have to use it or dump it.
Since corn is already on 30 inch rows, there are no sprayer rows or trampling there either. But one must manually count rows unless the passes are obvious (curvy starts, etc). The gps system makes this much easier to do. I also apply liquid nitrogen when corn is about 6 leaf. I do that with a rented 6 row knife. But this is very much like spraying - you just follow the rows to knife in a precise amount on either side of each row.
I pay a neighbour to combine for me. He charges by the acre based on a field survey. So if there is any waste there, it’s on him not me.
Plowing is a straight forward operation. I just plow from one end to the other and back. I have a swing plow so I have no Debt Furrows. I just follow the previous trench on each pass.
Disking and cultivating are probably my biggest opportunity for improvement. My current manually guided gps was a huge step forward. I would guess that there is some more opportunity there for autosteer, but it won’t be enough to warrant pursuing it on a financial basis.
Anyway, the calculator was an interesting exercise for me. I appreciate you showing it to me. It certainly showed me why my relatives out west should all be using RTK Guidance and why you like it.
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Remember that calculator is the savings between waas and rtk autosteer. Hand steering even with the best drivers you would save easily double that.
Current adoption of guidance is 98% in Western Canada, and 75% in Eastern Canada.
Between two farms I cover 3200 acres in a year. Efficiency is precious at every step. Plus the reduction in operator fatigue is worth more than the monetary benefit.
I wish I had a big family to help harvest like @davehofer1993, It looks amazing.
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I know what you mean. We had a big family on my home farm in Saskatchewan. Made a huge difference.
Your farm is humungous compared to mine.
I did notice the objective was WAAS VS RTK. I was just reacting to the questions the web app was asking and realized why it made such a big difference for you.
For me, it really wouldn’t matter how much better I could steer. Even if I could steer 10,000 times better, it wouldnt matter. A Spreader of fertilizer and 30 bags of seed are going onto the field. Any savings are lost the moment I return the Spreader to my co-op. I can’t accumulate or even capture the savings no matter how much they are.
I’m a small farmer. The entire farm only needs a half Spreader full of fertilizer. You can’t make any savings when you only make 6 passes in any given field.
The same principle applies to other inputs too.
Another major difference between you and I is the value of land. Land around you probably sells for around 3 grand an acre (just a wild ass guess). Farm land around here sells for 5x that and often much much more. That is a reflection of the fertility and the demand.
Last but not least, I think working a large farm like yours puts a totally different perspective on the value of your time. If you don’t get a field done in time, the weather can close in, and shut you out for the year. Every hour counts. For me, if I don’t get it done today, next week or even next month will do just fine. This year was a perfect example. I sprained my ankle really badly repairing a plow. That took me out of the tractor seat for a month at planting time. But you saw my beans. They are just fine.
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