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EZ-Guide 500's First Impressions - Ramblings
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tedbear
Posted 3/28/2007 07:37 (#126886)
Subject: EZ-Guide 500's First Impressions - Ramblings


Near Intersection of I-35 & I-90 Southern Mn.
We got our first shipment of EZ-Guide 500's via Ag Leader on Monday. Our first shipment consisted of 5 WAAS units and 1 Omnistar unlocked unit.

Tuesday we received a shipment of an EZ-Guide 500 keypad and the CAN cable to attach an EZ-Guide 500 to an EZ-Steer.

I am still waiting on my personal EZ-Guide 500 with Autopilot kit that is coming via the Trimble route.

The following are impressions and conclusions that I have reached so far. Please reply with corrections or additions as you see fit.

I quickly installed one of the WAAS units in my truck and did a bit of road testing. The screen appears very clear and things went as expected with the general flow being very similar to the EZ-Guide+. The larger screen, color and layout are impressive.

The buttons on our shipment were not marked with I, II, III, OK, Up, Down as is shown in the manual. This is consistent with the Rep's Demo model and another poster's observation here.

Tuesday when the keypad and CAN cable arrived I worked with them some. The Keypad appears to be the same physical unit as earlier keypads but with a different decal overlay. The 500 keypad has the I, II, III buttons on the left and the OK, Up, Down buttons marked on the right. This is consistent with the 500's display. It appears that when the keypad is installed, you must use it, since the built-in buttons then seem to be dead. This is a bit different than the EZ-Guide+ where the original buttons were still active. I don't see this as a problem - just a change.

Out of curiousity, I tried using an EZ-Guide+ keypad instead. The keypad seemed to work the same as the true EZ-Guide 500 keypad. The decal was not correct but a new decal or operating "by relative position" would be very workable. Ag Leader sent along the GPS out splitter that they have used in the past which has a branch with a 9 pin male suitable for connection to an Insight or PF 3000 for GPS out to those devices. I have not tried doing this but the menus seem to indicate that this is working. I wish they would have made this branch longer while since it is just too short for many installs and requires the use of a common 9 pin M-F extension.

Our first customer using a 500 with EZ-Steer came in Tuesday afternoon. They brought in their current EZ-Steer Steering Control Module. I updated the SCM via my laptop to V 4 of the SCM firmware which is necessary for the SCM to work with the 500.

Note: if you are using the SCM with an EZ-Guide+ then the current firmware is V 3.00.01. There was some confusion here earlier on this issue.

Version 4 is necessary when EZ-Steer is used with an EZ-Guide 500. Version 3 is necessary when EZ-Steer is used with an EZ-Guide+. If you have an EZ-Guide 500, an EZ-Guide+ and one EZ-Steer that you move around, it appears that you would need to reload the appropriate firmware into the EZ-Steer SCM each the SCM was moved. Both versions are available from the Trimble website or your reseller.

The EZ-Guide 500 attaches to the EZ-Steer SCM via a special CAN cable. This cable consists of a Deutsch DTM series 4 pole connector for CAN on one end and a 9 pin for mating to the SCM on the other. This cable plugs into the CAN connector on the EZ-Guide 500 power cable.

After attaching the 500 to the SCM we fired it up. It was apparent that the EZ-Guide 500 recognized that the EZ-Steer system was present as a warning screen appeared. This is the usual warning about the dangers of automated steering. After accepting these warnings, I went into the Setup (Wrench) menus. These menus were now expanded to handle the various setup parameters needed for automated steering. These menus were very consistent with the same questions about wheelbase, antenna height etc. as we have become familiar with in the EZ-Guide+/EZ-Steer setups. There were a couple of additonal questions relating to curve following.

The unit will get installed soon and we are anxious to see it perform.

For those of you who have installed a 500 in a Deere 8XXX tractor, I am curious as to your placement of the unit. The unit comes with a RAM mount which should be helpful. I envision some type of bracket from the cornerpost on the 8XXX but am interested in any suggestions. My concern is ease of reading without blocking the operators view. Both my Brother's and my vision are poor. The increased screen size will help greatly but I am still concerned about distance. Also from my experience with the Insight and other displays, I am concered about glare. I have not noticed a glare problem in my very limited drive tests but it is a consideration.

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