Hi. I’m trying to use this navigation software for guidance when collecting geophysical data. I have an ATV towing some equipment which is 6m behind and the GNSS needs to be on the equipment. I’m Bluetoothing the NMEA to a tablet with this software on which sits on the front of the ATV. Can I set the software up for this configuration? Thanks
The AOG software cannot be configured to reflect that the GNSS antenna is on a trailed implement. The angle between the trailed implement and the pulling vehicle would be crucial for accurate guidance and this angle is not known with any precision.
But practically speaking, I think if you configure AOG as if you were driving the trailer and just use your brain a little, you will be ok and be able to achieve what you want to do (if driving mostly straight lines). The guidance calculations won’t be perfect but you’ll be hand steering and can’t drive perfect anyway. The guidance will likely feel laggy and you’ll be able to affect that with the lookahead setting.
The bluetooth NMEA to the tablet is no problem at all. Connect bluetooth as normal in Windows and then select the correct COM port in AgIO.
If your ATV has electric power steering and you want to do some experimentation then it may be possible to add autosteer to your ATV.
Electric power steering systems generally use a torque sensor with opposing 5v signals. The steering is actuated by a plain jane brushed 12v motor. In between the torque sensor and motor is a comparator and driver circuit.
If you don’t need assisted power steering then you can use the 12v motor portion as you would with any AOG autosteer system. This would be very simple and use existing autosteer boards. Similar things have been done before by adding car electric power steering column to tractors.
If you want to keep assisted power steering then you could read the torque sensor’s 5v signals and send your own 5v signals to the EPS controller. When not autosteering your output signals would equal your input signal and things would function as normal. When autosteering you send your own 5v signals to the EPS, and you could monitor the torque sensor’s output and use it to detect a manual override to stop autosteering. To my knowledge this approach has never been implemented. It’s something that I’ve thought about and done some research on.
I don’t believe that AOG autosteer has been used on an ATV before in any form.
Hi. Yeah, I used my brain to try some different set ups but it didn’t work well. So I wanted to check if anyone had done something similar as I’m not used to the software and may have got something wrong. I appreciate the GNSS is needed on the vehicle for Autosteer but as I’m using a standard ATV that’s not an option. But thanks for your replies.
Why does your GNSS receiver need to be on the implement?
It’s where our sensors are and the data we collect needs to be accurately located. Having the GNSS on the ATV would be too inaccurate for the data collection. Thanks
Do you want to autosteer too? Or just record data?
In your case if you want both I suggest to use 2 recievers and 2 antennas.
There’s no active or passive tool steer yet (and no work on it as far as I know) in AOG.