Near Intersection of I-35 & I-90 Southern Mn. | The databoy would not be utilized in this type of situation. The databoy was a rather crude recording device to record the results of using some one product Raven controllers.
The PF3000 will connect directly to a serial Port Raven controller as John has indicated. This is a special cable - do not be tempted to just get a cable from Radio Shack. Certain pins are tied together for this situation, this cable is available from Ag Leader. The Raven controller would often be a serial 440 but other members of the Raven family will work equally well such as the 450, 460, 700,710, 750, 760 and most of the 4X00's.
With the PF3000 and Raven setup properly, they talk back and forth over this cable. The PF3000 can send new rates to the Raven Console. When a new rate is sent to the Raven (the Raven typically beeps 4 times -unless the feature has been turned off), this value becomes the new Rate 1. If the Raven is set to the Rate 1 position, the controller will attempt to match this new Target Rate. It is as if you punched in a new value of the Raven with your fingers.
In between Rate changes, the Raven is sending back its current application information to the PF3000. The PF3000 can then record these values, calculate rates etc. and make an onscreen coverage map.
To do this with the PF3000 or Advantage, the App Rate/Site Verification firmware must be loaded which will walk over the Havest/Site Verification firmware. This is quite easily done with the use of the memory card. Come Harvest time, the Harvest/Site Verification firmware would need to be reloaded.
The Serial Raven consoles need to be set to: BAUD RATE - 9600, Trigger -1, Units - sec and dLog - ON. This tells the Raven to send its information out at 9600 BAUD every 1 second.
The Ag Leader Advantage and Insight with App Rate module can do these things also. The Insight would produce onscreen color rate maps as well.
The PF3000 cannot run the Rawson equipment directly. By directly, I mean without using the Rawson cab box. The PF3000 Pro which later became the Advantage can work directly with the Rawson equipment in certain situations. The Insight Direct to Rawson package is being released this year.
You may not fully understand John's comment about a dry controller. The Raven controllers such as the 440/450 are really designed for a liquid situation. This would be where the product flow is determined by a flowmeter. The output of the flowmeter is pretty much directly proportional to to the rate of product delivery within a reasonably wide window.
A dry or granular situation is much different. The flow rate is determined by a shaft sensor that measures the shaft or conveyor movement. The amount of product that is delivered out the back is dependent on several factors. The gate setting and product density both enter into the computation.
To help with these factors, Raven made modified or expanded controllers in their product lineup. For example, the Raven 660 has provisions for working in either Liquid or Granular. If you pick Granular you enter in a Spreader Constant which is a special number for your rig with a certain gate setting. You then can change to a product with a different density by entering in the new density. If a new gate setting is used, a different Spreader Constant must be entered.
What John is saying is that the liquid only models can still be used with granular products with good success. This requires the operator to have a chart of Meter Cals that correspond to the various combinations of gate settings and densities that you might use.
This requires some "catch tests" which are not too tough to do but seem overly complicated to many operators. In brief, this amounts to putting some of the desired product in the buggy, setting the console Total Volume to zero and running the bed for a bit while catching the product. After the test, the weight removed from the buggy is compared to the Raven Volume total. By doing some Math, the meter cal can be refined and the test performed again.
This test would need to be repeated with different gate settings. The meter cal for other products of different densities but the same gate settings can be estimated by comparing the relative densities of the two products and adjusting the meter cal proportionately. This is how the granular consoles do it anyway. Again it would really be best to do several catch tests. This is by no menas perfect calibration since the product characteristics tend to vary but is usually close enough.
Edited by tedbear 3/24/2008 03:44
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Setting Up VRT Fertilizer Spreader
