Middlesex County, Ontario | The GPS antenna and receiver inside your phone is junk for what we are trying to do. There’s apps out there, but the hardware inside your phone will limit it to +/- 20’. Ok to mark a rock location but not so good for AB guidance for a ~50’ spreader.
The JD ATU is still relevant for Deere systems. It’s not supported by any other official systems.
If you want AB guidance on the cheap. There is an open source program called AgOpenGPS. It is free to download and runs on windows. You can use it with a USB GPS receiver. A couple hundred dollars buys you a pretty nice GPS receiver that’s as good or better as any official tractor GPS globe. If you already have a windows laptop or windows tablet then you just need to mount the laptop in the tractor and figure out how to keep it charged (or maybe you have something with great battery life). AgOpenGPS has a built in simulator and you can try “driving around” at your desk and setting up lines and boundaries and all that. If you’re interest maybe you could download it one evening, play around with it, watch some YouTube videos.
You can use AgOpenGPS as a basic lightbar/AB line guidance controller. You can also add RTK, auto steer, section control, auto U turn, etc. The right person can make a full RTK base station and RTK tractor with auto steer and U turn for a couple grand in hardware and a bunch of tinkering time. Think 3d printing and soldering and some minimal programming (really just downloading code). But to just use it as hand steered AB guidance you’ll just have to download and open the program and plug in the USB GPS receiver.
I’ve downloaded it and played around at my desk a little bit. I’m interested in it and will likely build a full auto steer system this winter.
https://discourse.agopengps.com/
Search AgOpenGPS in YouTube to see things people have built.
Edited by WildBuckwheat 7/27/2022 07:51
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AB guidance on the cheap?
