Ouch. I don’t want to be bringing a windows pc out on my tractor let alone the open station tractor that does most of my spraying and spreading. It’s too big, too expensive, and too fragile.
I’ve been using a hand-me-down phone for field navigator and field bee.
I’m a windows fan. But it doesn’t seem to me that using Windows was a very good hardware choice.
There are all kinds of Windows tablets out there… the hard part is finding the best for your needs. I.e. long battery life, easily replaceable battery, bright screen, one that doesn’t run too hot all the time, runs efficiently, durable, somewhat weather proof etc etc. Some are cheap, some are good price, some are $$$$$. I just use an old $100 Surface for field stuff I don’t care if it gets broke. $2000 Surface just in case. Tons of stuff or “junk” on ebay. You can find tablets with Survey software licenses on them to as a bonus. I.e. MicroSurvey FieldGenius, Carlson SurvPC, Survey Pro etc. Take a look at Panasonic ToughPads too.
But yes, Android are much lighter physically, overhead wise and on the wallet. Max battery life etc.
Ten Advantages of Android…
There are lots of very light, bright, refurbished mil spec windows tablets available pretty reasonable.
I do not see android being an advantage its a very under powered platform, the phones and media players are frustratingly slow running simple apps.
I would have said exactly the same thing about windows. Frustratingly slow, awkward, complex. And exactly the opposite about android. Fast, elegant, and simple.
As a fellow who has been intimately involved in the Windows OS and all of its predecessors from the very beginning, who has written drivers for it and custom programs of many types for a good chunk of his career, I’ll respectfully have to agree to disagree with you.
Give me Android over Windows any day for things like gps guidance. If we are talking things like spreadsheets, 3D Cad, and wordprocessing, then I have a totally different point of view.
Well I guess your stuck with forking out the big bucks for field bee or trimble then.
Field Navigator is totally free and it is still my favorite.
They have also been fairly responsive to my support needs.
So it’s not all that bad an outcome.
The biggest problem I’ve had is needing to spoof the GPS signal which I solved thanks to you.
However, I did fork out the 110 Euro ($160 Cdn) for the premium version of the Fieldbee app because that gave me support for the Emlid GPS System. While I am still very disappointed in the app, I was blown away to discover it didn’t need to be spoofed. For some reason, the Fieldbee folks have figured out how to access a Bluetooth GPS input directly. All you do is choose the alternative input option and then choose Bluetooth. It acquires the GPS signal right away - no spoofing required. Very cool. But, as I said, the app is not very good in my opinion.
Field Navigator is free and is very intuitive and simple to use. Even the psuedo lightbar works great.
As I said in the beginning, I just wish AgOpen had an android version.
Hi there,
Thanks for the examples! Did small research on my own as well. At first, I thought this is the feature that can be added to ReachView. But now I see it’s a specific guidance app feature and doesn’t fit there. Anyway, it’s useful to know what bothers you in your everyday work! I’ll keep it in mind for the future.
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