Near Intersection of I-35 & I-90 Southern Mn. | I am in the process of installing a liquid Direct Command system in a Nitro sprayer.
The sprayer was formerly run with a Raven 460, so I used the Ag Leader to Raven adapter harness. I had modified the original wiring on this sprayer a couple of years ago and at that time had added two additional boom valves. The purpose of that modification was to provide for a 80/100 switch box in addition to the 5 orginial joystick boom switches. Since the wiring was already present running from the cab out to the boom, I was able add these additional boom valves fairly easily. This meant that the booms did get rearranged a bit, since the original Boom 1 was then Boom 2 - sort of.
I made an adapter harness that rearranged the booms and everything was fine. The owner wanted this 80/100 foot arrangement so that the sprayer could be set to spray 80' on his corn fields since the sprayer would then better match up with his planter. The 100' setting was used for other situations.
Becasue of this I did need to rearrange the boom wires in the Ag Leader to Raven adapter harness for the Direct Command install at this time.
I also needed to use the Ag Leader Boom box since the original joystick only has 5 boom switches and now we really need 7. This will require installing a "null" adapter in the joystick harness so that the orginial boom switches are disconnected but that the hydraulic Raise/Lower switches still work.
So far this seems to work. The original boom switches needed to be disconnected for the DC modification since they could cause backfeeding and confusion if they were accidentally turned ON. Fortunately I was able to obtain a CD with the Nitro schematics that was very helpful in making this null adapter. It is a 16 pin Amp male to 16 Pin Amp female with all wires going "straight through" except for pins 1-5 which are purposely left out. Pins 1-5 are used for booms 1-5. Thus the original Master and hyd raise/lower functions work as before but the boom toggle switches on the joystick have not effect.
My goal as usual is to try to make these modifications without cutting any wires. I always try to do this with adapters etc. that could be removed so that the system can easily be returned to its former status in case the Insight is being used elsewhere or the sprayer gets traded.
My next concern is the GPS. This farmer has an Autofarm GPS system that is supposed to steer this sprayer. He moves the Autofarm from a tractor that is used for planting where I understand it works fine. I am told that it does not work well with the sprayer at higher speeds so the steering portion will not be utilized on the sprayer anymore. However, I am supposed to utilize the GPS out from the Autofarm to the Insight/Direct Command for mapping/AutoSwath.
I thought I had read here a while back that there were some problems when trying to use the Autofarm as a GPS source for this type of situation. I thought that some offsets were applied to the GPS out that caused problems with the Insight.
If this is in fact the situation, I anticipate problems. Could someone enlighten me with their experiences in using an Autofarm GPS in this arrangement? Thanks
Edited by tedbear 5/16/2007 07:16
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Autofarm to Insight with Direct Command
