ag gps system

[jimg]

Id like to know if anyone uses such a system for any task(s) related to farming. I was thinking about rolling my own and it looks possible for small $$$ plus I get something I can really use and modify as needs change. In a nutshell I was thinking about running it off of a laptop using a usb gps w/ antenna. The s/w to do basic mapping is free and many stats like soil data and land survey are available...free I think. I would superimpose that on an x acre grid for the purpose of mapping soil types and fertilitiy, soil amendments and harvest data. I was also going to use it for navigation as it seems to be a better choice than foam. Right now Im working on ideas for using the data w/ implements and Im not completely certain how Ill work that but I have a cople ideas. As I move over the field Id want to vary the amt of amendmens being distributed or keep count of crop harvested so it can attribute to a particular grid block. As Im in the planning stage I thought it would be interesting to see how others are using their system or perhaps get feedback from others who rolled their own or are thinking about it.

 

[Birdhunter1]

A buddy of mine has a trimble light bar in his tractor he has set up for planting but he rarely uses it since he put it in. It is accurate though as we were playing with it several times straight. He actually put it in his tractor to be able to set up a spray rig or when pulling a fertilizer buggy.

 

[jimg]

Ive looked at the Trimble equipment and while very nice is fairly pricey. Im also a bit familiar w/ their road constrution setups. It sounds like your friend was using that rig just for navigation. I was hoping to use it for much more than that. esp for field and crop managment. After some small amt of hunting around it seemed that I could put together a cost effective system that I could use to help keep costs down and to compile corp history etc. Im sure all of this can be bought off shelf but that would be expensive and could be a pain to tie it all together.

 

[Birdhunter1]

Yes his is for navigational purposes, and so far he says he can plant straighter rows without it than he can with it. Basically what i boils down to is he's been doing it by marker and eye for 30+ years and still prefers that, but he has teh trimble equipment for fertilizer buggies and such.
He has thought about doing the GPS/laptop set up for crop stats and such but has not done so yet.

 

[crazymike]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Yes his is for navigational purposes, and so far he says he can plant straighter rows without it than he can with it. Basically what i boils down to is he's been doing it by marker and eye for 30+ years and still prefers that, but he has teh trimble equipment for fertilizer buggies and such.
He has thought about doing the GPS/laptop set up for crop stats and such but has not done so yet. )</font>

The only GPSs systems that will plant straighter rows have steering assist. The steering assist is extremely accurate.

 

[bdog]

I use GPS a lot at work. Both small units like Garmin that you can buy anywhere and Trimble RTK setups that cost in thew tens of thousands of dollars.

The homemade setup you are talking about will give you around 4' accuracy most the time. This might be good for some things but I would think it would be useless for planting or spraying as 4' is a lot. A lot of the farmers here use Trimble RTK autosteer setups. We are talking centimeter accuracy. It is awesome the stuff they can do.