Near Intersection of I-35 & I-90 Southern Mn. | I went with the Insight for several reasons. First of all I had experience with the Ag Leader products prior to using Autopilot. Second I work for a dealer that sells Ag Leader products and we are quite familiar with them.
As you stated the Insight can be used as a yield monitor in a combine whereas the FMD cannot. The Insight has a lot of flexibility in working with a variety of other modules to perform other tasks.
In my case the Insight is used for NH3 application, manure application, the planting application where it records varieties and monitors my liquid fertilizer as well as spraying where it controls the carrier and a direct injection pump.
The Ag Leader concept has a well organized data management system where these various operations can work in harmony.
I also have an EZ-Guide 500 running an autopilot in a different tractor. I find Trimble's data mangagement scheme to be clunky at best. I have no experience with the FMD but I believe that the data management scheme is similiar.
As others have stated, the display (Insight, FMD, EZ-Guide 500 etc.) really has no effect on the steering performance. The Nav II controller (silver box with no display) is what is really doing the steering. The display is the human interface where your desire's (such as setting an AB line, nudging etc.) are conveyed to the Nav II controller.
With any display, the Nav II controller needs to be calibrated for the rig it is in. With the Insight or EZ-Guide, this is done with a laptop. With the FMD, it can be done with the FMD display itself.
Since this calibration is not done very often, the inconvience of having to use a laptop isn't a big issue.
When you create an AB line with the Insight it is associated with that field. When you finish the field and go to another you are asked if you wish to "save" this AB line. If you chose to save it for future use you are asked to give this line a name. Doing this can be very helpful in the future.
I have started to create an AB line for each property line that I have with neighbors. Since most of these are straight, this works well. If I do this carefully, this line become my permanent base line for each side of the field. If I wish, I can then shift this line over to half my implement width to create a new AB line for each operation in future operations. I usually don't bother to save the shifted line but just create a new one each time based on the permanent property line.
My EZ-Guide 500 would allow some of this same concept but the data management of working with the AB lines seems less straight forward so I don't bother. Also that tractor is used with tillage operations so the exactness of hitting the property line is not so important as it is with planting. |
Insight with Trimble Auto Pilot
