It is said that AOG is written by farmers, for farmers so let’s imagine a complete beginner; a traditional farmer who is smart, self reliant, handy and motivated. Reads about AOG in a farming magazine, wants to build it, ends up here.
Basic questions:
I want to build a PCB for the latest version of AOG? Where do I go, what do I buy, where do I get boards printed?
How do I set up a base station / rover config over either flat ground with good line of sight or undulating land with very poor line of sight?
What is the best mechanism to attach PCB to steering wheel, where can I get the parts for this?
How do I configure and control sections / tools?
If I have a floating cab, where do I attach the IMU and with what wires and connectors?
I am helping a couple of farmers with a couple of builds and these are the questions they ask.
There are some excellent videos, documents and tutorials available out there, but for a first time builder coming here, where do they start?
Just saw your post from a couple of months ago, and I couldn’t agree more. The traffic on this group looks as if it has gone vertical lately which is obviously a good thing, but, if I were just finding this group now and wanted to get started I wonder if the sheer volume of posts would be helpful or overwhelming. I wonder if contributions should be “tagged” about their content as well as just included in the broad category, sometimes a topic starts as something and ends up something else after a few posts, this makes it difficult to search for relevant threads sometimes and you can miss some really interesting stuff. Especially now that its getting harder to simply read everything.
There doesn’t appear to be the will to organise this which is understandable if people are busy with other things, but does prevent many farmers from getting involved.
I receive fairly regular messages from people who just don’t know where to start with this and I’m still digging through advanced searches to get information.
As an example, I have spent weeks trying to understand why my base is drifting and found a 60+ post thread which details PPP.
Post 15 gave me the information I sought, but this post is two years old and took some finding.
The information is here, the quality of it is often excellent and some of the members are genuine experts in their area, but I defy any “average farmer” with average IT skills to locate a simple set of procedures by which to get this working.
Even the manual often only describes what buttons / functions are, not what they do, it’s more “tool tips” than explanations.
It must be acknowledged that AOG is not a commercial product and I’ve heard it said that if a farmer wants an off the shelf, well documented and well supported product, then go and buy one for £20k, but this kind of flies in the face of the mission statement here, “Farmers helping farmers.”
Having said this, I am eternally grateful for the time and efforts that people have freely given to this project and I am very happy to say that I have got my machine working. However, this is because I’m an IT engineer who doesn’t mind staying up until 3AM studying technical data, then publicly asking very basic questions to ensure I understand things. That’s not to mention the number of PMs I have sent to members picking their brains.
And finally, I should probably stop moaning and just help to update the manual.
Wiki was great at simple find out about AOG and place to get basic information for most basic setup with schematics to test without PCB. Forum is place to discuss and help with problems great to browse when you seen wiki and know that you want to go forward with AOG. To get ideas from succesful builds and if you get stuck on the way there is probably solution in search on this forum if you are building standard setup with well documented PCB and connections.
One pinned post that will lead to up to date wiki. AOG build is maybe too much universal for starters I was able to find videos about setting up things but not about how to actualy use AOG (now those videos exist and there was no manual). development is fast anything writen today is outdated in a month.
As a first timer, I would agree to this as well. It’s very difficult to find everything you want to see. The more I read, the more questions I have! Now some of those questions I KNOW I’ve read the answers to but don’t know where the thread was that I read it! LoL! On the search again! Now what I’ve started doing is bookmarking any thread I find might be relative to me at some point soon. So that I can find it more easily. I must have 30 aog bookmarks now! LoL. I hate to always ask the simple questions. Took me forever to find the wikis. Most forums they are pinned at the top of a page. I didn’t realize they were listed on github in their own spot.
If a problem is solved, I click on the 3 dots under that message and save the bookmark. There are nearly 100 bookmarks Or I copy an important message or photo and place it in my word document. There are problems and solutions section on the last pages of the user’s manuals of the devices, in fact, under a single heading, wouldn’t it be better if people write under that heading whichever problem they have solved?
Or I copy an important message or photo and place it in my word document. There are problems and solutions section on the last pages of the user’s manuals of the devices, in fact, under a single heading, wouldn’t it be better if people write under that heading whichever problem they have solved?