Autosteering for Valtra N163

Hello everybody.

I found AgopenGps some time ago and have read through tonnes of different discussions on here. I would like to tip my hat for everybody who somehow have contributed to this amazing project.
I decided recently to take the plunge and get my tractor autosteering with Agopengps. I thought I’d start this thread to journal my project from start to finnish, best case scenario someone can get some inspiration for themselves.

I started reading from the hardware wiki and began with ordering a pcb from jlcpcb, simple enough but as usual they didn’t have all necessary parts. 8 shortfalls to be exact.

I photo’ed my screen for my own reference and started looking for these parts, their sister company (LCSC) had a few in stock so I ordered from there and found the rest on Aliexpress.
I have to add, I have no clue what these shortfalls do or if I need them or not but I decided to find replacements either way.

Ordering the PCB completed.

Next up is the GPS module, I ordered this from ardusimple, along with the antenna and the IMU. I also picked up an extra GPS module and antenna for the RTK base station.

Ampseal connectors, along with some misc. wires from Aliexpress.

Next order of business was the Teensy 4.1, and this one proved to be difficult to find, it was either out of stock, or if some place actually had it in stock the shipping was 8 times the price of the Teensy.
After trying a bunch of different shops I found one on a site called robomaa(dot)fi it was way overpriced but shipping was cheap since I live in Finland so when comparing to other sites with outrageous shipping fees, I settled with this.

I ordered the cytron motor driver from opencircuit(dot)com

The wheel angle sensor from Ali express.

The Tablet I picked up a refurbished FZ-M1 Toughpad from Ebay, I couldn’t find one with an ethernet port unfortunately but the one I ordered had LTE so I can atleast skip the hotspot part.

I decided to go with the phidget motor for steering, after reading through all the discussions I concluded this would probably be the cheapest/easiest to set up for a beginner.
Buying this one also proved to be difficult but I found one on ActiveRobots.com
The stepup converter for the motor was also from Ebay.

As far as I understand, this is essentially all the hardware I need, so for now all I have to do is wait for my parts to arrive. In the meantime I have been trying to figure out how to wire it all up and I have a few inquiries about my tractor.



I have alot of different ports, and I have no clue what most of them are, 2 on the pillar is IsoBus I presume, but do anyone know what the third one is for? I also have the metal plate on the roof for an antenna and a connector but I do not recognize what sort of port that is?

Lastly I have these buttons which I should be able to use for the GPS system, but I am not sure how to connect these to the board.


Thank you all for everything you guys do here, and I hope you follow along my project once I start receiving my parts in the mail.

Sincerely
Ken.

Edit. added pictures to the main post instead.

Try thi’s Steering a '22 MF 6718S over CANBUS

3 Likes

Looks steer ready, so could be supereasy with Canbus.

1 Like

Follow the guide Arek84 posted, I’m pretty sure you can do all that with CANBUS pretty easily.

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Hello.
I’ve read through Tonys CAN thread and Arek84’s guide, it seems like steering via canbus would be the most elegante solution although I feel like this way is harder for someone not familiar with CAN.

I removed some plastic covers from the Valtra to try and find some markings on the ports in the picture but there is no writing on the port or any tag around the wires.
Also the evolution throughout Tonys thread is a bit hard to follow, I’m not entirely sure what hardware I need for CAN steering.
I already ordered the AIO board, so for CAN steering I gathered I need:
2 x Arduino Uno
2 x CanBus Shields
2 x LED’s plus 2 x Resistors
1 x On/Off switch
1 x Button
1 x 10k Potentiometer

As per the first post, and from the hardware wiki I read I need tranceivers for the AIO board.
The different projects around CAN Bus steering all look great but as a novice I feel a bit overwhelmed when reading through the threads.

Ken.

Your AIO PCB has two Can chips on it, it should be good to go!

1 Like

You don’t need 2 arduino Unos, looks like your AIO board is fitted with CAN chips as TeddyStamford said. You’d only need them to go down the CANBUS sniffing route… but the work has been done; you can go straight to autosteer.

Simply build the board, follow my guide, flash the Teensy with the custom AIO code as I did, and try it in the different CANBUS ports.