Yes, the tractor changes heading in correct direction, hitch swings opposite direction of front of tractor which takes planter away from heading toward line for split second then starts coming over gradually. Slide hitch or swing hitch moves the xte in matter of second or two. Tractor is moving toward line while hitch was also commanded to. Tractor still rolling to the line while hitch just slid to the line or in this case over the line to bring planter to the line that much quicker.
That’s what our hitch is, 20 feet on our trailed planter. When hitch slides and heading of planter hitch changes, the seed openers are steered that heading instantaneously to make up the xte. All this while the tractor was still rolling the pivot to the line. You’ve essentially eliminated 20 feet of tractor length variability out of the equation. You put your varioguide sub inch of the line and now your tool only has to compensate the one inch or less which should essentially put you sub cm all day long. This is exaggerated, but to understand the point anyway
I believe passive and active system together would be a perfect world. For OEM systems, we can’t compare when it’s already there. But for retrofitting gps, what’s better. These systems cost peanuts compared to anything production or even camera guidance systems after a crop is rowed. I hope I helped a bit to explain.
Innotag and Pro tracker I believe in the US here. I’m using cat 4 old navigator hitches that are built like a brick poop house. They’ll all work equally well. There’s tractors with OEM swing hitch and OEM steer axles on equipment also here.
Exactly. Ideally AOG would have the option for both, and depending on the needs of the user, and what kind of hardware they have, we could use active, passive, or both at the same time. It’s fun to dream! It would be interesting to have a poll and see how many people would give toolsteer a try if passive toolsteer was an option. I think there are a lot of people that don’t need it bad enough to spend the time and money on active toolsteer, but if all it required was an extra receiver/imu, I think quite few people would use it.
I think what might be misunderstood by some in this conversation is the degree of accuracy needed.
For us the goal is to get the planted row on the line whether on curves or hills with a trailed planter to a degree of accuracy that facilitates being able to come back in with a self propelled sprayer, or a tractor driving on the same line and keeping between the rows, so we aren’t talking sub centimeter accuracy but within 3 or 4 centimeters.
For me the camera on the row crop cultivator corrects with the sideshift to keep cultivator over the row down to sub centimeter accuracy, this is reliable even if Internet or GPS goes down. The main thing is to be able to auto steer the tractor between rows without needing constant nudging.
So I guess my simple minded question still is, why, if its possible to record a boundary based on the calculated edge of a trailed implement that is 15 feet behind the hitch point and get it correct, could the tractor not be steered to land that calculated center point of the trailed implement on the line instead of the tractor itself.
We aren’t concerned at all about keeping the tractor pulling the planter between the rows, we are more concerned about getting the seed rows centered on the line within 2 inches of accuracy for the sake of subsequent row crop passes.
The Fendt Vario guide you just simply have to enter the distance behind the hitch point it Autosteers too and it does it by calculation, tbis also makes a dramatic difference how the line is aquire starting into the row. If its steering to get a hypothetical reference point 15 feet behind the drawbar pivot it will oversteer farther past the line in order to bring the implement to the line faster this obviously is also affected by agressiveness settings but none the less, it does calculate the hypothetical implement position.
Having said that, the real Passive steering system then puts an antenna on the implement, better yet an IMU corrected position. And uses that instead of a hypothenical position in the same way.
The matter of side hills i understand is more challenging because of counter movement of drawbar because of the change in heading. But my limited understanding would like to tell me that the physical response time of a trailed implement is slow enough and the needed changes gradual enough that it should be possible to just send the tractor further up hill to compensate.
When steering manually in real life this is what happens not? When hand guiding a cultivator on a side hill you just keep steering uphill to keep cultivator where you need it as side hill increases and vice versa.
But hey I’m not a mathematician, and completely illiterate in the field of coding, and not educated beyond baisic in geometry. So Kudos to the guys that have gotten this system so far. Its an amazing interface to work with in all aspects except putting trailed inplements on the line!
Thanks for hearing me out!
Did you read Brians answer of at my photo at the telegram chat?
At the hill you already can control it via Sidehill slider which slightly changes WAS so it steers uphill as you do buy hand but this is tricky to set up but it can work but it often changes at diffrent hill pattern so for following the tramline with the sprayer it does not work the hole time.
So the Fendt Varioguide thing only works for driving into the line and driving at curves with diffrent styled tools but at hills it could not work because it does not know how the tool does behave so only solution is to put a receiver at the tool of with IMU or dual to know its real position.
In my opinion it would be nice to have the Fendt vario guide calculation but to get the best results you need to know the real tool postion mainly in hills Brian it right there in my opinion.
Yes the best is to have both but as you said passive would be used by many many people because it is cheap and for the most things it would be good enough and that is mostly to get pass the pass with sprayer and that Tramlines are at the same spot every year. Other option is to do no tramlines like you in the US with self driving sprayers but if you have row crops the problem is there again because you want to drive between to rows.
Here if people do notill they make the main tramline at the same spot only drive via RTK and plant diagonal or if it are seeded not planted crops they just drive over it.
But problem are row crops than driving between rows of corn is not possible at the hill or you drive of your main tramline because rows are shifted and the corn or whatever is at the hard tramline ground and will not do very nice there. Only option than is to plant diagonal but I guess that only works here bacause we don‘t drive that fast with our sprayer at out small fields😅
Germany. Organic farming. Side hills (really ones). Hoeing crops.
I’m on of the guys beyond the 95% fence
Hoeing is done with a venerable Fendt carrier aka “Geräteträger” F275.
No problem to manually steer the hoe in the middle of a GT to ± 3 cm precision at 8 km/h, 20 % side hill, 50+ cm crop hight, undulated by side wind for 8 hrs a day …
Schmotzer sales clerk at Agritechnika 20 years ago: “If you have a Geräteträger, then there’s no way to sell you a camera system”
(So, I got a second one, then…)
Following seed tracks by GPS would be “nice to have”, but only 2nd priority.
But you can’t hoe properly when the seeding is crappy.
Some images what should not happen:
So seeding at ± 5 cm would be great.
Current machine is a trailed Horsch DSS2 (pictures are close to mine)
6 m widht, 22 cm row spacing, ~ 6m trailed length.
Early design when in the 1990ies, Horsch shifted with their 3-wheelers to double disc seed coulters.
A trailed seed container (replacing the 3-wheel trac), with a 3-point-link that carries the seed bar.
(will take some photos, promised).
So may be that would be an easy point to introduce tool side shift.
So my idea was:
rough steering on the tractor (JD 6530 premium autopowr)
(maybe 1 receiver and IMU or dual receiver UM982 dual antennae)
fine steering on the seeder aka implement
I’d attach the two antennas of a UM982 at the far out ends
I’m still early in testing and learning, but that was what I had in mind 15 yeras ago when I realized 2x dual antenna multiband RTK was far beyond budget.
5x AOG board from JLCPCB are waiting for test, as is a UM982 board. Antennae I hope to arrive yesterday…
I’m not afraid of some fiddling, coding or development versions, although I’m much more familiar with linux sytems than I am whith Windows and embedded arduino style gadgets. But I think whith some guidance, I can cope with them, too.
I’d get the tractor on AOG first running rtk dual successfully, then work in the tool steer slide or swing hitch for your trailed seeder. It really does work amazing for how simple and cheap to make.
