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Farmers are hacking their tractors because of a repair ban (2018) [video]
- tiatia 7y agohttps://www.belarus.com/ https://www.belarus.com/
- abetusk 7y agoAre there any open source or open source hardware efforts to create or replace tractor software and electronics? I know of the Global Village Construction Set [1] but are there any others that exist that are gaining any sort of traction? Are there any forums, GitHub (or other) repositories or other resources for folks to see what's going on and/or to help out? I'd love to see what's available and, if possible, help out myself but I don't even know where to start (I'm not a farmer and live in an "urban/city" environment). It seems like this industry is "ripe for disruption" but I'm woefully ignorant. What stops farmers from slapping a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino with an array of sensors, GPS, modems and other electronics to "DIY" their tractors and other electronic/automated farm equipment? I also know of FarmBot [2] but that project looks to be targeted at a different market. I also see OpenFarm [3] but that seems like it's more about knowledge sharing of crop growing rather than the mechanics/electronics/software aspect of farming. [1] https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/ https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/ [2] https://farm.bot/ https://farm.bot/ [3] https://openfarm.cc/ https://openfarm.cc/
- simion314 7y agoThe solution is a legal one, force the companies to provide the software required for you to use your hardware. It is stupid as a user you can only see a red light and only an "authorized dealer" can plug a laptop and see the exact problem and detailed diagnostics. Without the law your open source software would be blocked by DRM and I am sure the companies would attempt to void your warranty if they can find you modified anything.
- imglorp 7y agoIt's also about serial number encoded parts. The computer will only accept licensed ones it recognizes. Apple plays the same shitty game to keep you from replacing easy components yourself. Louis Rossman has testified to Congress on the matter.
- thrownblown 7y agoLouis has been travelling the country to testify at various state legislatures. Its been fascinating following his efforts on youtube. here is a playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkVbIsAWN2lsmovRO20_gtfUfgWi-XnnT https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkVbIsAWN2lsmovRO20_g...
- rasz 7y agoso does Raspberry Pi Foundation https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1088506051295567872 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1088506051295567872
- imglorp 7y agoWhy? Just to single source the camera?
- rootusrootus 7y agoYes, to preserve the income from selling the cameras, to pay for the R&D.
- rasz 7y agoWhat about proprietary PMIC? https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=238779#p1459572 https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=238779#p1... MxL7704-R3/MxL7704-R4 are custom single client versions of the common chip, Apple does the same thing with Charger ICs.
- imglorp 7y ago
- benboughton1 7y agoFor me the most interesting disruption is the low cost L1/L2 GPS such as Ardusimple combined with OpenAgGPS (https://github.com/farmerbriantee/AgOpenGPS https://github.com/farmerbriantee/AgOpenGPS) offers an alternative autosteer solutions that are currently add ons offered by manufacturers for $20 to 60k. When working in large fields, most tractors aren't hand steered any more but still have an operator in the cab to keep an eye on the implement.
- stopads 7y agoThe libertarian tech monoculture is the problem, not the solution. If you knew the history of the industry or Kansas over the past 30 years you'd realize you're exactly backwards. Deere and similar companies got the idea to create this "perfect walled garden monopoly tractor" from Steve Case. AOL was the first to really lay out the pattern so many other industries (and Google and Amazon and Apple and other monopolists) have now emulated. This isn't about innovation or disruption, it's about consolidation, power and monopoly. There are lots of smart people trying to innovate in Kansas right now, for the most part they are getting absolutely crushed by massive corporate concentration.
- magduf 7y agoWhat exactly is stopping these farmers from just buying from another vendor like New Holland or Kubota? Every time I read this stuff, it's all about John Deere being the Apple of farm equipment, and there's almost nothing said about their competitors, almost as if they don't exist. I feel like I see the same thing when people I know complain about Apple: if I try to suggest they switch to Android because it doesn't have those problems, they look at me like I have a 3rd arm. I really wonder how much of this problem with farmers being unable to repair their own equipment is self-inflicted, by absolutely refusing to buy from a different vendor.
- zentiggr 7y agoIt's only because Deere is the biggest most well known face of the problem, and because they've been most aggressive baout locking things down. It's not just their tactic, but stopping them sets the precedent. Also most news outlets don't have bandwidth for multiple articles about all the other companies doing the same thing, so they are the placeholder for the topic.
- TheRealDunkirk 7y agoEven if one of the other manufacturers in the space doesn't permit an easy self-repair path at the moment, it would seem to be a golden opportunity to expand their market by doing so. Given the way capitalism works in the US now, though, if someone like Kubota broke out of the pack by doing something like this, something tells me that Deere would find the money to buy them out, and spike the idea. IMO, the government should be putting a stop to this sort of thing. If you're on this site, then you've seen this happen scores of times in the tech space. But, again, a lot of people on this site are specifically hoping for a buyout like this to make their first couple hundred million, so this is a weird place to complain about a tech monopoly in tractors.
- randomdata 7y ago> What stops farmers from slapping a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino with an array of sensors, GPS, modems and other electronics to "DIY" their tractors and other electronic/automated farm equipment? There are a handful of farmers doing exactly that. Cost is a major hurdle though. Not so much the cost of the actual hardware (although sufficiently accurate and precise GPS units have only recently started to come down in price), but the opportunity cost of developing such systems. Time spent working on them is time spent away from the farm business. Spending time on improving agronomy and marketing could yield hundreds of thousands of dollars of additional revenue vs. saving $50,000 on a commercial solution that will retain much of its value and can be resold later. It just doesn't make sense from a business perspective. Only those who see it as an exciting hobby will venture down that road.
- AnthonyMouse 7y agoIn principle this is what investors are for. There is known demand among farmers for repairable tractors, but it costs a moderate amount (more than an individual farmer has) to develop one. So you go raise some investment money to develop the software and then make it back by selling repairable tractors at a profit. Maybe if you succeed you'll get copycats using your software on their own tractors, but by that point you've already succeeded. It may even help you by growing your ecosystem and making you more competitive against the closed incumbents.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoIn practice though, how easy is it to find an investment for an expensive venture you don't intend to directly profit from? Investors will want their returns, and they'll likely push for the same means the project was started to circumvent in the first place.
- AnthonyMouse 7y agoBut you do intend to directly profit from it. If you just start out selling tractors that are only equivalent to the incumbents and with all the same restrictions, who is going to buy them? The reason people want to buy from you instead of them is that it's possible to repair your tractors. And if people are buying from you, you're making money. Maybe a few years later the investors decide they might like to make even more by closing things up, but by that point the software is already published for free on the internet (which was what got customers interested to begin with). So if they do all that happens is that someone else starts making repairable tractors, which people still prefer, using the software which is by then free and already exists. Have people not noticed how much money Amazon makes out of "your margin is my opportunity"? Taking market share from the old guard by making less (but still some) profit per unit is a great way to make money.
- montalbano 7y agoSome previous discussion which may be of interest: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9414211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9414211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13925994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13925994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13802969 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13802969 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13990266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13990266 Edit -- and some more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10897309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10897309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19900022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19900022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14074894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14074894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13925994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13925994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16386012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16386012
- dang 7y agoAlso https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14176195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14176195
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Dirlewanger 7y agoI fully support Right to Repair movements. John Deere/Apple et. al doing this is pure unchecked corporate avarice. With that said, I have a hard time feeling sympathetic for midwestern farmers. They most likely vote straight Republican every election, and I'm pretty sure fixing this problem is something their Congress reps don't care about too much.
- mindslight 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A... > The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). ... Passed on October 12, 1998, by a unanimous vote in the United States Senate and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998 The political blame lies with both popular teams, as they both carry out the will of big business. They divide us over issues of taste, to push their dressed-up authoritarian agendas. Don't fall for it.
- Dirlewanger 7y agoThat may be true, but Democrats will at least be more ostensibly receptive of the issue. Bernie Sanders makes it an explicit point on his campaign website. I'm guessing other candidates have as well.
- mitchty 7y ago> That may be true, but Democrats will at least be more ostensibly receptive of the issue. Bernie Sanders makes it an explicit point on his campaign website. I'm guessing other candidates have as well. As someone that grew up in a pure Red state for decades and grew up on a farm/ranch, there is zero chance of them voting Democrats for the reasons you think they should. Want to know at least one reason why? Know those farm "subsidies" democrats love to hate? Also known as: the government pays for farmers to keep fields fallow so we don't get another dust bowl. Farmers like those subsidies, they're a good thing. City people hate them, think they're a bad thing "we spend taxes for farm states". Yes I'm overgeneralizing but i've real work to do today so I can't get super complex. Get to know a few farmers and understand that your perspective on Democrats is highly skewed on their policies towards places with population centers. You can argue Republicans are worse in as many ways as you want, but until you understand why none of those ways matter to farmers, you'll forever lack an understanding of why things are the way they are.
- dusted 7y agoThere must be a market for repairable tractors and other farming machinery by now?
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoYeah I'm not sure I understand the problem; the US is a free market, there are a lot of investors and a lot of engineers out there, why aren't there competitors putting John Deere out of business with products that the farmers do want? Or are JD tractors so far ahead of any competition that their customers just suck it up? There has to be some anti-competitive lock-in for that to be a thing.
- SkyBelow 7y agoMy guess it patents are that system. Not tractors, but I did listen to a podcast about how one of the main toothbrush manufacturers used patents to crush a group of dentist trying to make a better toothbrush for cheap. The patent holders waited until the last minute so that the dentist already had sunk their money into product about to hit the market to get the courts to stop it. We are now at the point patents hamper innovation.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoBuilding tractors efficiently at scale is not an easy task and requires lots of investment and experience. John Deere has decades of experience in production, building supplier networks and dealer networks and making tractors reliable. This is very hard to build up quickly and very expensive. Big hardware is much more difficult than for example software or small consumer devices. That’s why we barely see any new car manufacturers either. Tesla may make it but it has taken them a very long time and very hard work.
- dreamcompiler 7y agoDecades? John Deere has been in business for 183 years. That said, I think most of their products today are overpriced and under-reliable, and they richly deserve to be disrupted.
- mvidal01 7y agoI thought Horace Clemmons and his Oggun tractor was on HN before but I can't find the story. https://thinkoggun.com/ https://thinkoggun.com/
- kome 7y agothat's such an awesome concept and story! thank you for sharing the link.
- dang 7y agoWe changed the URL from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPYy_g8NzmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPYy_g8NzmI, which is a copy of this. It was discussed at the time, but only a bit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16292410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16292410
- asdfasdf1231 7y agoThe perverse incentives that nobody spell out: this is good for monopolies. from soy farmers in brazil to local contractors bidding on government road work in new york. Everywhere the bigger company, that can have several more machines than it need for the daily operation, all leased with warranty, will destroy the competition that can't lease because of bad credit etc and so will have downtime/missed deadlines/lost harvests because they cannot get repairs on time. Some big pockets benefit a LOT from all this, not just the dealers. Also, the root cause for this was when car dealerships start doing this with cars and nobody cared.