More Technology and Training Sessions Planned

We have set the schedule for some training sessions coming up on August 5th in Harlan, and August 12th in Ames. We will have Ag Leader Technology personnel on hand presenting information and HTS will be providing lunch. We will also have tractors available for ride and drive.

I have also been catching up with technology - not the kind you use in the field, but rather life on the computer and web. I have set up a page for HTS Precision Ag on Facebook, and you can actually RSVP to these training sessions right on the facebook page. You can follow this link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Harlan-IA/HTS-Precision-Ag/222272725264?ref=ts

Even if you aren't a facebook user, you can still check out the page. If you are a facebook user, you can also become a fan of HTS Precision Ag.

InfoAg Conference

This year's conference will be held July 14th to the 16th in Springfield, IL. This conference has in the past been very valuable, with some of the sharpest in the Precision Ag industry in attendance. There will be a vendor area to show products, as well as a full schedule of very good presentations on several different topics. If you haven't been to this conference before, I would strongly encourage you to go. You can find out more about the conference at http://www.infoag.org/

Any customer of HTS running Ag Leader equipment that is planning on attending, contact me directly for a special offering!

Come see the Iowa RTN work for yourself

I have had my GPS testing expanded since I finished in the field, as I pulled the system from my tractor and have sent it to central and southeastern Iowa to test in some different areas. The results have been pretty impressive, as we have seen better than expected cell signal with the system, and a minimal amount of dropouts.

If you would like a chance to see this system run for yourself, come to the Western Iowa No-tillers Field Day! We will have this system set up and running on a tractor for field demonstrations at this event. Below is some info about it - it is a free event, but you must pre-register. You can read the whole article at http://www.extension.iastate.edu/news/2009/may/162001.htm


SHELBY, Iowa -- The second Western Iowa No-tillers (WIN) Demonstration Field Day is planned for Tuesday, June 16 near Shelby, Iowa. More than 200 producers and agriculture professionals attended the daylong event in 2008 to learn more about implementing no-till practices. No-till farming practices provide a positive option for southwest Iowa producers who have highly erodible soils in their fields and are dealing with increasing input costs. To accommodate an anticipated larger audience, more equipment displays and increased parking, the 2009 event will be held at the Carstens 1880 Farmstead just south of Shelby, Iowa.

Finally finished!

This weekend marked the end of planting for 2009 for me, so I thought I would take a minute to recap thoughts and experiences of the testing I have been doing this spring on the Iowa DOT network as a RTK differential source for my GPS. Here is a quick recap of my equipment and results:

I have an EZ Guide 500 lightbar which is cabled to a cellular modem. This allows me to access the internet, which is then pointed to the IP address for the Iowa DOT servers that are feeding the information from their RTK Network. This EZ Guide 500 is running my autopilot on my tractor.

This leaves a lot of pieces in the puzzle, so testing and troubleshooting of this system has proven extremely difficult. Early on, I was having problems with cell phone reception (I thought) and would lose connection to the server. I have been through several different upgrades via different firmware, different settings, etc., and still didn't get the problems I was seeing to completely go away, although they lessened in frequency. There have also been the problems of network outage from the DOT itself, which brings on a whole different level of problems.

This weekend things were off to a pretty good start, but I was still losing connections from time to time. I had a great conversation with one of my friends Saturday evening, who I won't name but would encourage him to post his experiences in the comments of this blog, that also ran a similar setup this spring. We came to the mutual agreement that the network would just "quit" broadcasting information from time to time. The reasoning for this opinion ( I can't specifically verify what was happening each time) is for several reasons, but on my unit it would remain with a good cell signal and connected and logged into the server, but would drop out of RTK Fixed on the lightbar.

At the end of the day, I think this is great technology, but still has some bugs to be worked out. I have seen the progress over the season this year, and if it continues we could have something quite good on our hands in a short time. My opinion as of now is that the DOT still has some work to do on their network. I also believe that anyone trying to use this technology would be somewhat frustrated, as it hasn't proven to be reliable yet.

Feel free to post comments, questions, suggestions, or your personal experiences here!