Missouri river bottom south of Sioux City, IA | Hi Ted
I’ve been working with Tru Count Inc since Oct on this. When I saw their new Air Clutch, it made sense to me that we should be able to use the EZ-Boom to control the clutches. Actually this concept of using GPS to control an electrical solenoid is not new to me. I was doing that with HGIS software long before “AutoSwath” became popular.
I liked Tru Count’s thinking when it came to keeping the planter going if something goes wrong with the air or electrical system. You need these to be working to shut off the row, if not then the planter will function like it always had. That’s unlike a sprayer. The electrical solenoids need voltage for the sprayer to work so if you have anything go wrong, your not spraying until you get it fixed. With that being said Tru Count made a reversing relay box so when the EZ-Boom switches are off (no power coming from the EZ-Boom box) then we will have power going to the electrical solenoids on the air clutch valve. We had to make some firmware changes in the EZ-Guide Plus and FMD so when the planter came to a stop, the boom sections would not turn off like they do if you had it on a sprayer. Otherwise, then you moved foreword you could have a gap because of the latency involve between when the GPS detects speed and the clutch turns on.
At this time there is an "as applied map" or “coverage map” in the EZ-Guide Plus and FMD. We don’t record population. We don’t need a boundary with EZ-Boom/Tru Count planter row control. We are also adding an implement switch so then the planter is up your not recording a coverage map.
Tom N
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Tedbear - EZ Boom = Poor man's seed command?
