My idea of a “pass through box” looks something like this. The big cable with big 39 pin rectangle monitor connector, it’s just a common DB37 on the sprayer end.
This could be a very simple PCB that inserts between the sprayer PCB and conveyor cable. Most of the signals can pass straight through, and we could have the motor connections broken out to screw terminals or solder pads. Simple to install and simple to remove, no permanent modifications.
The sprayer control cabinet is sealed/watertight, has room for extra circuits, has 12v available, and has room for extra cable pass throughs.
I thought it would be ideal to put the relays in that control cabinet and then just run Ethernet/wifi to the tractor.
As a special bonus: the hydraulic controls are very similar, perfect place to tie a homemade auto boom height system into the sprayer.
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I’d love to hear more about your boom height! Thanks
I think I understand.
The problem is that the rate controller doesn’t now that the booms are being switched down line. The rate controller, by default, only tried to regulate when a boom section is on. So if you have your controller toggles on, then the rate controller always works, even when you change gears to turn at a headland. And if you have your controller toggle as off, then there is no regulation. Neither is ideal.
Not mentioned in the Cerea thread, but I believe there is a setting in the monitor that allows the system to always regulate even when all switches are off. That has the same negative as above - the system will regulate when you switch gears to turn around (and will then have a low application rate for a few seconds when you switch gear again and start spraying).
The Cerea author has connected to the spray monitor’s foot pedal switch to tell the system when all sections are off. For me that’s not ideal because I really want the relays out of the cabin.
I will think more on how to defeat this, but I’m not sure it’s possible without the foot pedal switch or de-coding the JobCom protocol.
Just ideas floating around in my head. I’ve strapped some ultrasonic sensors to the boom before and played with filtering the data and having a distance readout, but never any further.
I wasn’t quite able to understand through the translation how the db15 foot pedal connector worked, so I did my own test.
Shorting pins 1 (+12v sensor) and 10 (area switch) with the display menu E8.5.1 set to “high/low level” will turn all sections off. It doesn’t just turn off area, or also turns the sections off.
So you can add your section relays as normal; inline to the motors. Then an extra relay could be wired to db15. You come into a sprayed area and sections turn off one by one. Once they are all off, db15 relay turns on and all the individual section relays need to invert states as well.
