Near Intersection of I-35 & I-90 Southern Mn. | Yesterday I helped a couple of customers setup their Insights with Seed Command on the Bench.
An item that can easily be overlooked but is very important is the GPS Offsets for the tractor. When defining a tractor that is new to the system one is not forced to enter the GPS offsets. These Offsets default to zero which is probably fine for many situations but not for Autoswath. I wish that the Offset screens were presented when a new vehicle is created.
Once the tractor is created, the GPS offsets should be entered. These Offsets are referenced to the rear axle. Several distance items need to be entered. These refer to various positions such as GPS to the rear axle. Antenna height etc. Also setup the HITCH tab items which refer to Hitch Distance from the rear axle, 3 point distance etc.
In the Implement setup the distances indicated should be from the hitch point (drawbar or 3 point) to the point of application.
When a Configuration is chosen on the RUN screen, the system uses the various distance measurements to compute the distance from the GPS antenna to the point of application. This distance along with ground speed and the Autoswath timing values determine when Autoswath starts/stop application on the various sections. If the values for the tractor are not entered, the total distance may be incorrect which could cause timing issues.
It is important to also note that there is an Autoswath settings screen for Seed Command which is spearate from the Autoswath setting screen for Direct Command Liquid. On a more complex setup where Seed Command is being used to shut off the row units but the Liquid Control Module is also being used for a liquid application at the same time, the values for these two screens can be set differently. Since the two screens appear to be identical it is possible to get this issue confused.
Also remember that when setting up a planter for split-planter situations that each section must contain a different variety. Once a variety is picked for a section it is filtered out of the list and is not available for another section.
If the various sections contain different varieties (true split planter) this is no problem. However it seems quite common that at times (finishing up a field) that "both sides" might contain the same variety.
Someone suggested having two configurations: One for Split Planter and another for Single variety. This is fine if the entire field is split planter or single variety.
A workaround that some of our customers use is to enter the variety name in the product list with two slightly different names such as DK 50-19/1 and DK 50-19/2 and pick the same color for both. These are the same varieties so if a split planter configuration was used and DK 50-19/1 was picked for the Left side then DK 50-19/2 would still be available for the Right Side. The Summary screen would show these as different products but this should be fairly obvious to the operator.
Edited by tedbear 3/7/2008 07:04
|
Tips on setting up an Insight with DC/Autoswath
