hello fellow agopen users, two years ago i bought a Dubex sprayer with a Muller spraydos spraycontroller equipped with a Teejet section control box. it worked like charm for two seasons, with the DGPS receiver on the boom the sections where controlled very well and precise until some errors came up this season. So i wanted to switch to a agopen controlled section controller but there are a few things that im finding hard to decided, that is why i wanted to make a topic about it. things that are very important for my sprayer setup are rate precision and reaction time, section precision and comfort. I grow unions and seed potato’s so its important to use a precise amound of fluids.
the pros of the system that i have now:
a receiver on the boom (very precise beceaus its a trailed sprayer and its always center with the boom).
very good rate with the Muller Spraydos.
super simple to use.
the cons of the system i use (somethings i want to improve switching to agopen):
no RTK.
a huge monitor and controller box so it takes a lot of room in the cab.
cant manually close sections when using section control.
no option for variable rate control for taskscards.
so there are a few options that some people of the community came up with that i like but i cant deside what fits well for me.
option1: keep my Müller spray control and Teejet control box, lose the Teejet reciever and screen and try to control the section box with agopen (via the tractor’s receiver or a extra receiver with imu and a extra screen) so everything stays original
option2: make a smaller version of the Teejet box with a own relay system so everything gets being cleaned up in the cab and use a agopen reciever like in option1
option3: replace the rate control part of the Müller Spraydos with a RC15
I hope you can give some opinions about my problem or some experiences so i can learn from them and make a decision for my sprayer.
(sorry for the bad English)
I might have access to the same Teejet System + Section box (although on different machines) I wonder if we could create an AgOpen → Teejet CAN translator.
But to be honest Option 3 would be the best. But since the hydraulics are still integrated into that big box of yours I wonder what would be the optimal approach. (Create a new hydraulic box that has the original connector, switches BUT it also has RC15 ? )
yeah i was wondering that to, yesterday i was disassembling the box and saw that there is a CAN connection between the Teejet screen and the section control box, if we can make a CAN translator its a easy fix for my system but it isnt a improvement of room in the cab…
I like option 3 the most to but i am not a big professor like some of you so its not gonna be easy. Making a new hydraulic box isnt the toughest thing to do, the box has two different connector’s on the bottom one with a sticker "hydraulics’’ so maybe the lower box can stay and we only need to change the one on top but i need to know what the pin out for every connector is to check that, maybe the other connector doesn’t have to be split like the system now does. How compatible is the rc15 with my sprayers flow meter, sensors etc? Is it any where close to plug and play? It would be nice to make the system original again if i ever gonna sell the sprayer.
I don’t have experience with RC15 as we came up with our own PCB (which influenced RC15) but from the connection point of view the only trouble I had was with Raven flowmeters requiring pull-up resistors on the signal line. Other than that everything was pretty much plug and play. (Well lots of plugging and playing)
I’ve done over 10 sprayers and no 2 are the same sadly.
Usually a 1+ day project.
Once you have the corresponding connector it’s usually easier.
looks very interesting! did you do a sprayer with the same kind of controller as i have? i think that sprayers with my kind of muller spray controller use similar parts on the sprayer (flow meter etc) am i right? I found some one with the same kind of spray controller i have who wrote a pin out but he has other kind of valves.
i’m gonna search some more. do you have any kind of pictures with the hole system and how it works?
This is exactly what I have build for my sprayer. Works very good but uses old computer and AOG side by side. You should go for RC15 and find a way to control hydraulics. I think flowmeter and autosection can work as good as you are used too now.
Yeah that’s one of the reasons i would like to lose the big section box…
I’m gonna disassemble the hydraulic control box to look how that one works. The boom on/of switch and the section switches are on the hydraulic box so I think using the hydraulic controller isn’t possible.
I’ve done many sprayers but don’t see which flowmeter yours have. It should work with the rate controller. Doesn’t matter if it’s our version or the one David made.
The only difference I seen in flow meters is:
Pull-up internal (raven and maybe teejet) or external via a resistor.
Frequency some has 50 pulse per liter (raven) and some has 1500 (polmac) arag is usually halfway.
Valves can be 2 or 3 wires but usually both support 2 wire operations.
3 wire systems usually have the advantage of external section control support but not always.
The 3 wire approach kinda means we could just use optocouplers for the signal (but I never tested this) I’m yet to disassemble a 3 wire valve
As for the rest RC support both master and slave solutions
master basically bypasses the boom and you could leave the sections on
Slave is letting the fluid of the boom back to the tank but you should close all the sections still this is circulation system
This could be combined with the control valve acting as a master valve and it could bring the flow of the boom close to 0 when closed
There’s also a few kind of control valves based on their timings:
7-14 seconds is what I’ve seen with automatic controlled systems 21 second is usually for manual over electric control systems
Then we have fast valves ( combo timed ) where they work 0-100% within a few seconds. You can tame these by doing short pulses and wait between them. (20-50ms on 200-400ms off so you read feedback from the flow meter)
Then we have the control valve that regulates flow and some regulates the fluid pressure via air and a membrane.
So yeah it’s not a question if it works or not.
Ps: winter time is good you have lots of time. But sadly the temperature doesn’t allow testing of sprayer…
the thing with the valves is interesting, i have the option to use the boom with a circulair system (on the hole boom except for the last two sections) and with the valve closed with a non circulair system. i can switch in between those to option with one switch on the (hydraulic) control box. three sections on the back of the boom the other five are on the other parts of the boom.
on the left side of the sprayer is a pressure regulator and a air compressed accumulator who helpes the pressure to stay stable when sections are controlled.
I also have müller electronics for my amazone sprayer. I just made a AOG machine box that I attached on the valve connector. The cable attaches on the bottom of the AOG box instead. Section can still be operated manually. The AOG box communicates with UDP.
Do you have any documentation how you build this system? I have just bought amazone sprayer with the exact same control box and I am looking to build section control for it before next season.
Does rate controller work with this?
It is just built the electronics on a experimental pcb board. Relays change the polarity of the valves to close them.
It works fine, but I do not adjust the flow setting as sections shuts of. I have thought of this but never built anything.
I have attached an old picture of the box when I was building it.
I think I have made some kind of schematic in easyeda as well.
The valves are always powered. The polarity change the open/close.
When the valve is manually on, I use the positive line to power the relay. The arduino can then trigger the relay to change the polarity and close the valve. If you manually stop the flow on the Müller box the relay loses power and you will be master.
inside of the control box, i was thinking about maybe a nother option, soldering cables at the back of the switches and make them relay controled. thats a smaller option i think but i need to know if thats a save option.
