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flexicoil aircart prescription mapping
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mvisto
Posted 1/19/2007 23:57 (#91323 - in reply to #91288)
Subject: Re: flexicoil aircart prescription mapping


Southeast ND
Interesting how you keep mentioning that Flex-Control is outdated. Maybe there might be computer hardware incompatibilities with voltages or something that limit other equipment to tie in to the Flexcontrol, but there is still no-one yet today that fully matches what Flex-control with its native task controller was able to do since 1998 when Version 2 was released. And if the Insight monitor can log multiple channels, there should be no reason it cannot VR control multiple channels. Jeff Bentley of AgLeader informed me some time ago that full VR control of 3 channels on the Flex-Control would be available, but maybe I misheard him.

Flex-control with its own task controller has been and is still able to do multi-product variable rate prescriptions on up to 9 products and has been able to do that since 2000 or 2001. When all other companies have been variable rating one product and logging only one product, Flex-Control can map and VR control every channel hooked to the system (up to 9). I use the Flexcontrol to log a 3 tank air cart and a two section planter, 5 total channels, for several years now. While I do not use the VR features extensively at this time, I have tested it and can also fully variable rate all 5 channels. While most companies force you to use the same reference map for each product today, the Flex-control can use a separate map for each channel. People talk about logging split planter data, but I have been doing this for 5 years already. Flexicoil split section mapping of individual booms on the sprayer is also fully logged by the task controller. It has only been 2 years ago when direct command was released when AgLeader implemented this and JD came out with it last spring.

I have asked several JD people if you can hook the planter up behind an air cart and no one seems to know yet, (I am very curious if anyone here has tried this and gotten it to work). The Flex-Control system can hook any module up in any configuration and the system recognizes it and works. There are physical limitations to 4 air cart tanks, 2 sprayer controllers, 4 planter sections, etc. But, you can hook a Flex-Control sprayer system behind a Flex-Control air cart and it automatically works. You can hook a planter up behind the sprayer or behind the air cart and it works. You can mix the sprayer controller, air cart controller, and the planter controller all together in any configuration and have all of them functional from one display in the cab. People that use dry fertilizer through an air cart with a planter and have liquid fertilizer in furrow controlled with a spray controller can do it all with the Flex-Control with full logging of all channels and full VR of all channels. The planter controller for Flex-Control monitors both the population and can variable rate the planter. There are controllers for Flexcontrol that also monitor all of the drill run on the air seeder.

The desktop software support for Flex-Control .log files has been extremely poor. While all of the data for changing products for the channel, (put in a new variety of seed), split planter data, split sprayer section data, etc. is all fully mapped within the .log file that the Flex-Control task controller records, no software company that I am aware of takes advantage of it. I know that SMS ignores products changes that occur in the field and does nothing with the split planter and sprayer data. Maybe Mapshots works with the file better, I don't know. Farmworks does not even offer support for the .log files, only support for .tag (tag markers), and .pre (prescription files). I do not know if Farmworks supports the multiple channel VR prescriptions yet. I am pretty sure SMS does now with version 5. I haven't been able to test a prescription in the field yet. To take advantage of the capabilities of the Flex-Control system has required me to write my own utility software that reads in the .log file and creates a .csv file of the data.

The Flexicoil VR air carts also use a electric motor over hydraulic system to turn the meter rolls. The electric motor indicates the rpm that the meter roll should turn and the hydraulics provide the power to turn them. It functions very similar to how power steering works. This system is extremely accurate with meter roll rpm varying less than 1 rpm when speed and rate are constant. Also this allows the system to go from a very low rate to a very high rate (<5 lbs/acre to 400+ lbs/acre) in typically less than a second. The JD air cart can take several hundred feet to change the speed of the meter roll from very slow to very fast.

On the negative side, CNH has fallen extremely far behind in offering a large mapping display monitor for the Flexcontrol system. The new monitors works with the AFS planters which is a totally different system from the Flex-Control. It has always upset me that Flexicoil was so far ahead of everybody in 1998 to just let it all slip away since its acquisition by New Holland and then CNH.

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