7 ms·

Tractor cab looks like a space ship (2021) [video]

81 points by mmh0000 3y ago

TibbityFlanders 3y ago
[dead]
ijhuygft776 3y ago
The result of the cost of this tractor divided by cost of a Tesla is somewhat close to the number of screens in this tractor.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Would be amazing if Tesla started building tractors like Porsche and Lamborghini used to. EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lamborghini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lamborghini
  - samstave 3y ago
    >...Lamboghini used to..." They litereally started as a tractor company, and as I understand it was annoyed at Enzo Ferrari and challeneged himself to making a supercar, and later the "Holy Shit" Countach was born (but the earlier Lambos are really beautiful)
  - dylan604 3y ago
    what do you mean used to? Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear fame has a 2-season show about his farm. In the first episode, he buys a Lambo tractor because "of course he does" type of logic.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      > As a world financial crisis began to take hold, Ferruccio Lamborghini's companies began to run into financial difficulties. In 1971, Lamborghini's tractor company, which exported around half of its production, ran into difficulties. Cento, Trattori's South African importer, cancelled all its orders. After staging a successful coup d'état, the new military government of Bolivia cancelled a large order of tractors that was partially ready to ship from Genoa. Trattori's employees, like Automobili's, were unionised and could not be laid off. In 1972, Lamborghini sold his entire holding in Trattori to SAME, another tractor builder. The name lives on in the ag market, but built by SAME, not Automobili. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini_Trattori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini_Trattori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAME_(tractors) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAME_(tractors)
      - yencabulator 3y ago
        Then you have to also agree that Lamborghini cars are Audis (/Volkswagens), and before that they were Chryslers. > Patrick Mimran sold Lamborghini to the Chrysler Corporation in 1987 for US$25 million. [...] In 1998, Mycom Setdco and V'Power sold Lamborghini to the Volkswagen Group where it was placed under the control of the group's Audi division. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lamborghini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lamborghini
  - IndrekR 3y ago
    Lamborghini still makes them (owned by SAME): https://www.lamborghini-tractors.com https://www.lamborghini-tractors.com There is also a tractor company called FERRARI, but they have nothing to do with Enzo Ferrari as far as I know.
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 3y ago
      I believe you are correct about Ferrari: "Ferrari Tractors are designed and built in Italy by the BCS Group." (https://www.ferraritractor.com/faq https://www.ferraritractor.com/faq) English Wikipedia gives up at that point, but itwiki has https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari_(azienda) https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari_(azienda) Google Translate: "FERRARI of Luzzara (RE) is one of the historic brands in the field of agricultural mechanization. Founded in 1954 as "Officine Meccanica Ferrari SpA", in the period of reconstruction and mechanization of the country, it was one of the most enterprising companies in the agricultural machinery sector." Meanwhile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari says it was founded in 1939 and doesn't mention tractors at all.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      Ferrari (the car brand) and CNH (Case IH, New Holland) were both under the same ownership a few years back, so in a way you could say they were Ferrari tractors. Seems there has been some changes in the meantime, though.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
orenlindsey 3y ago
Farmers are truly geniuses. They have to be a combination of agriculturalist, meteorologist, engineer, mechanic, handyman, builder, vet, hydrologist, and now we're adding technologist to that. They also generally have an amazing work ethic (getting up before sunrise, working in the blazing heat all day, etc). Not to mention dealing with disasters like diseases, weather events, accidents (lots of sharp blades, tools, etc). Massive respect for them. Even with this tractor, this guy likely does more work than the majority of people. They feed our entire society with a ton of work for very little reward. We don't give them the respect they're due.
- mstade 3y ago
  I've recently picked up Farming Simulator on PS5, not so much because I'm into farming or anything but it's a great little game for shutting your brain off for a while. There's no point to the game, beyond just farming, which is great because you can pick it up and drop off whenever, you're not in the middle of some narrative. Point being: they've put a lot of effort into modelling the different tractors and first time I used the in-vehicle perspective I was amazed at all the screens and knobs and dials and levers and what not. They don't really do anything in the game, it's just for show, but man they are complex beasts clearly. Then again, I can definitely see the value of at least some of these features. Like you spend an inordinate amount of time just making sure you get maximum yield from a field, while keeping costs low, so having a screen tell you how much fuel you're consuming per turn or whatever is actually pretty useful. Anyway, I absolutely agree – farmers are incredible! I have a whole new appreciation for farming equipment and farmers in general, just from playing this silly game.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    I wonder how much it is like an aircraft - many many many dials and knobs, all with there purpose, but only a few needed in normal operation, or used once or twice a trip.
    - dguest 3y ago
      I assumed the purpose on an aircraft is a bit different: you don't want a "check engine" light to go on when you are 10 miles from the nearest landing strip. Probably a bit more detail is useful when a stalled engine means 50% odds of survival.
maxglute 3y ago
I mean does it have to? Looks like slapping a bunch of hardware to circumvent poor interoperability. And F35 cockpit has large single MFD, MFD setup of any 4+ generation fighter is 2-3 screens for what I imagine to be more complicated missions.
- bluGill 3y ago
  No, but this is a 10-20 year old planter where all the useful parts have been replaced with something from a different manufactures. Buy a new planter and more than half of those independent screens/controls go away. Buy a new tractor and another can go away. Buy a tractor and planter from the same manufacture and you can get down to just 1 (but realistically you have enough data to monitor that you would have 2-3). There is also the ISO11783 protocol which this tractor (which is at least 10 years old) has in the base model that could show everything, but the resolution available isn't really good and so while 3-5 controls could use that instead of a separate box, anything on a high resolution screen needs to stay. I don't know why the manufacture of those controls choose not to.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
AShyFig 3y ago
Is there anywhere I can anonymously upload an image to show off my own "spaceship tractor cab?" It's been awhile since I've tried, and it seems imgur no longer allows non-users to do this.
- erikig 3y ago
  I've used postimg.cc in the past, links are still live and it seems pretty anonymous.
- TheNorthman 3y ago
  Imgur should work fine. It at least does so for me. If not your style, https://imgbb.com https://imgbb.com is also an option. More ads, though But please do upload a picture. That would be interesting.
  - AShyFig 3y ago
    Thanks! Imgur worked on my desktop. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39195506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39195506
    - TheNorthman 3y ago
      Very cool! While at uni, I worked on a local fishing boat doing (amongst many things) hardware/software integration, and did some work on equipment communicating via NMEA. Very fun blast-to-the-past, didn't know the standard was used outside of marine environments.
aidenn0 3y ago
They talk about GPS guided tractors for planting vs. using a marker wheel. I'm surprised GPS is accurate enough for that; are they using something like DGPS to get the needed accuracy?
- supermatt 3y ago
  GPS with RTK from a basestation. Get about 2.5cm accuracy.
- FrankPetrilli 3y ago
  GPS on its own especially with systems like WAAS is quite accurate these days, generally within a few meters. If you need more (which planting most crops does) there's also RTK [1], which permits centimeter-level accuracy from relatively inexpensive / simple setups. Here's an example of a local RTK base station with radio link in the industry [2], and additionally it's possible to get these corrections off cell network data connections [3]. Radio offers you more hyperlocal corrections which could improve accuracy a touch, but comes with all the downsides you'd expect of a local radio system so both are viable options. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_kinematic_positioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_kinematic_positionin... [2] https://www.deere.com/en/technology-products/precision-ag-technology/guidance/rtk-radio-900/ https://www.deere.com/en/technology-products/precision-ag-te... [3] https://www.deere.com/en/technology-products/precision-ag-technology/guidance/mobile-rtk/ https://www.deere.com/en/technology-products/precision-ag-te...
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    Hmm, I always thought of RTK as including carrier-phase tracking, which would make it overkill for farming if the base-station is fixed (on the order of 2mm relative-position accuracy; absolute positional accuracy is not much better than DGPS without carrier phase-tracking). Wikipedia is ambiguous as to whether or not RTK necessarily includes carrier-phase tracking.
- eschneider 3y ago
  Tractors don't rely on _just_ GPS for planting, etc. They augment with some other technologies to get the necessary accuracy (a few cm of accuracy) for positioning.
dylan604 3y ago
I think it looks likes less like a space ship and looks closer to a modern music producer's work station.
- falcolas 3y ago
  I was thinking NOC myself. One monitor per major system being monitored. Not a ton of space ship vibe (especially the Dragon, for example), just a lot of poorly integrated individual systems that each comes with their own monitor and control system. Which is maybe better than a tightly integrated system when it comes to farming implements.
  - pbourke 3y ago
    > Which is maybe better than a tightly integrated system when it comes to farming implements. He mentions swapping out components from last season a couple of times, so lack of integration is probably a feature.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      I don't see how farmers can afford to not use this tech, but I also don't understand how they can afford them. We constantly told about the thin margins farmers work with, which seems like the math to afford the payments on these machines ever work out. It also seems like this is one of those things that buying the base model is never enough. There were two different types of row cleaners in the front of the towed unit. There were devices at the back of each row that also seem like an add-on. The thing that presses the seeds down, and then the smart version that detected soil moisture and other info. Of course that's one of those 'for a small nominal fee' type of add-ons. John Deere seems to figure out how to keep his hand in the farmer's pocket eternally
rmason 3y ago
I left my career as an agronomist 25 years ago. That was around 8 years into the precision ag revolution. It was great to view this video, we only dreamed of this sort of control while planting back then. Everything was manual and getting everything calibrated was a dusty job for the farmer, setting something climbing back into the tractor, going a couple of hundred feet and then getting out to make another change. Once you got everything dialed in you rarely made many changes, The ability to change field by field or even in a field to adopt to different soil types is nothing short of amazing. Lots of times an individual row would stop planting and you wouldn't notice. I worked a lot with satellite infrared photos and it wasn't uncommon to look at a field and see an entire row missing or planted at a half rate. I predict in time though a lot of these screens will become less important as your AI agent will be making all these sorts of adjustments for you.
ballooney 3y ago
It feels like we’re in a bit of a nadir, agriculturally, in terms of soil exhaustion and erosion, crop monocultures, and so on, largely because of technology letting you do the same thing to bigger areas more quickly and with fewer people, and we’re reaching the end of the epoch where the cost of this can be blithely externalised. _However_, it seems like it could also be an inflection point, again because of technology. Imagine if tractors could tow behind them not a spraying trailer but a computer vision + laser system that could identify and zap individual weeds rather than napalming the whole ecosystem chemically, or that had arms that could pick only the correct, or ripe crop, or sub-varietal of crop, on a field planted with a variety of useful plants that balanced out the intensity with which they extracted nutrients from the soil. All of this at the cost/scale required to support the 8 billion (or so) people on the earth now with the agricultural land we have now, but perhaps too with the ability to open up more marginal bits of land to agriculture, and de-intensify the current wrung-to-death expanses of flat that we have to use now to accommodate the limitations of current farm machinery.
- pests 3y ago
  > a computer vision + laser system that could identify and zap individual weeds rather than napalming the whole ecosystem chemically > arms that could pick only the correct, or ripe crop, or sub-varietal of crop, on a field planted with a variety of useful plants I've seen demos for both of these in the last year or two.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Modern farmers using the best practices are building back soil not exhausting it. The typical practice since about 1980-1990 was holding the line, but research has found to how build up soil and a few farmers are employing it. While lasers are not used (yet?) you can now get sprayers that will spray chemical only on weeds and not the rest of the field. Or more likely you apply herbicide at a low dose across the whole field and then a high dose (possibly different chemical) where there is a weed.
- Animats 3y ago
  > Imagine if tractors could tow behind them not a spraying trailer but a computer vision + laser system that could identify and zap individual weeds. It exists. [1][2]. Robotic tractor, vision system, multiple 150W CO2 lasers. There is no such thing as overkill. It's really cool. "Certified Organic". A more practical approach is See and Spray.[3] Cameras and deep learning are taught to recognize and target enemy weeds. The sprayer has a valve for each nozzle, and it only zaps the weeds. Uses far less pesticide. For some crops a zap of spray fertilizer is used. The weeds overdose and die. That's now a John Deere product. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53Mma8IOEzc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53Mma8IOEzc [2] https://carbonrobotics.com/ https://carbonrobotics.com/ [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-EFtTa6IU& https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-EFtTa6IU&
ozim 3y ago
Well yeah GIT command line is insufferable interface it should be much simpler /s
AShyFig 3y ago
For those who are curious, here is the office view of my own "Spaceship tractor cab." https://imgur.com/a/ebUlEVy https://imgur.com/a/ebUlEVy Devices: Tractor - 1979 Versatile 875. Indestructible. Used for planting with a 40' air seeder. Trimble 500 - This is now a redundant GPS receiver which provides a special NEMA string to the device below it. Will stay in operation until I can figure out how to reliably duplicate said string via the primary GPS. PF3000 - Old reliable. This computer allows rudimentary tracking of loads to allow for seed and fertilizer rate experiments. Data is saved to a CF card for later transfer to SMS Basic or QGIS. CF-D1 Tablet - This handy bright touchscreen handles the signal from the primary GPS and RTK towers. It communicates with various sensors and a DC motor to steer the machine. Runs AgOpenGPS, a incredible godsend of a project which allows these kind of autosteer retrofits on old tractors for dirt cheap. Various camera screens to monitor the operations of an Air Seeder. You know what's cheaper and more reliable than airflow and runout sensors? Cameras. :) Hopefully I'll be able to upgrade these to IP cameras this spring, but for now they're all various brands of cheap wired "backup cameras." Agtron sensor monitor (canbus I think?) - This is supposed to monitor shaft RPMS and other various functions for the Air Seeder. It kinda works, but most functions are broken. AtomJet Aux Hydraulic system - Allows older tractors to handle newer more intensive implements. AgopenGPS control board (V2.. I think) - Takes Wheel Angle sensor data, GPS data, and Motion sensor Data, stews it all up on an Arduino nano and feeds that to the steeringwheel motor. Ardusimple GPS RTK2B - Primary GPS receiver and NEMA string generator. Not pictured - A streamdeck MK2 set up to control AgOpenGPS functions. Of dubious usefulness. :) Other future upgrades - Replacing the main hydraulic manifold block with electronic solenoids. This should allow AgOpenGPS to raise and lower the implement automatically, as well as control various functions of the air seeder. One more step on the road to total automation!
- MrUnderhill 3y ago
  What a beast! This is deserving of its own blog post and HN thread!
dtgriscom 3y ago
I looove learning about technology that I don't usually come into contact with. My dad was a doctor, and subscribed to the New England Journal of Medicine. The articles were opaque ("Defective Regulation of Inflammatory Mediators in Hodgkin's Disease — Supernormal Levels of Chemotactic-Factor Inactivator"??), but the ads were marvelous. Ultracentrifuges! Gel electrophoresis! Confocal microscopes! Electrosurgial units! Blood gas analyzers! Catnip for this budding engineer.

81 points by mmh0000 3y ago

[dead]

The result of the cost of this tractor divided by cost of a Tesla is somewhat close to the number of screens in this tractor.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Would be amazing if Tesla started building tractors like Porsche and Lamborghini used to. EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lamborghini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lamborghini
- samstave 3y ago
  >...Lamboghini used to..." They litereally started as a tractor company, and as I understand it was annoyed at Enzo Ferrari and challeneged himself to making a supercar, and later the "Holy Shit" Countach was born (but the earlier Lambos are really beautiful)
- dylan604 3y ago
  what do you mean used to? Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear fame has a 2-season show about his farm. In the first episode, he buys a Lambo tractor because "of course he does" type of logic.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    > As a world financial crisis began to take hold, Ferruccio Lamborghini's companies began to run into financial difficulties. In 1971, Lamborghini's tractor company, which exported around half of its production, ran into difficulties. Cento, Trattori's South African importer, cancelled all its orders. After staging a successful coup d'état, the new military government of Bolivia cancelled a large order of tractors that was partially ready to ship from Genoa. Trattori's employees, like Automobili's, were unionised and could not be laid off. In 1972, Lamborghini sold his entire holding in Trattori to SAME, another tractor builder. The name lives on in the ag market, but built by SAME, not Automobili. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini_Trattori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini_Trattori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAME_(tractors) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAME_(tractors)
    - yencabulator 3y ago
      Then you have to also agree that Lamborghini cars are Audis (/Volkswagens), and before that they were Chryslers. > Patrick Mimran sold Lamborghini to the Chrysler Corporation in 1987 for US$25 million. [...] In 1998, Mycom Setdco and V'Power sold Lamborghini to the Volkswagen Group where it was placed under the control of the group's Audi division. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lamborghini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lamborghini
- IndrekR 3y ago
  Lamborghini still makes them (owned by SAME): https://www.lamborghini-tractors.com https://www.lamborghini-tractors.com There is also a tractor company called FERRARI, but they have nothing to do with Enzo Ferrari as far as I know.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 3y ago
    I believe you are correct about Ferrari: "Ferrari Tractors are designed and built in Italy by the BCS Group." (https://www.ferraritractor.com/faq https://www.ferraritractor.com/faq) English Wikipedia gives up at that point, but itwiki has https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari_(azienda) https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari_(azienda) Google Translate: "FERRARI of Luzzara (RE) is one of the historic brands in the field of agricultural mechanization. Founded in 1954 as "Officine Meccanica Ferrari SpA", in the period of reconstruction and mechanization of the country, it was one of the most enterprising companies in the agricultural machinery sector." Meanwhile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari says it was founded in 1939 and doesn't mention tractors at all.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    Ferrari (the car brand) and CNH (Case IH, New Holland) were both under the same ownership a few years back, so in a way you could say they were Ferrari tractors. Seems there has been some changes in the meantime, though.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

orenlindsey 3y ago

Farmers are truly geniuses. They have to be a combination of agriculturalist, meteorologist, engineer, mechanic, handyman, builder, vet, hydrologist, and now we're adding technologist to that. They also generally have an amazing work ethic (getting up before sunrise, working in the blazing heat all day, etc). Not to mention dealing with disasters like diseases, weather events, accidents (lots of sharp blades, tools, etc). Massive respect for them. Even with this tractor, this guy likely does more work than the majority of people. They feed our entire society with a ton of work for very little reward. We don't give them the respect they're due.

mstade 3y ago
I've recently picked up Farming Simulator on PS5, not so much because I'm into farming or anything but it's a great little game for shutting your brain off for a while. There's no point to the game, beyond just farming, which is great because you can pick it up and drop off whenever, you're not in the middle of some narrative. Point being: they've put a lot of effort into modelling the different tractors and first time I used the in-vehicle perspective I was amazed at all the screens and knobs and dials and levers and what not. They don't really do anything in the game, it's just for show, but man they are complex beasts clearly. Then again, I can definitely see the value of at least some of these features. Like you spend an inordinate amount of time just making sure you get maximum yield from a field, while keeping costs low, so having a screen tell you how much fuel you're consuming per turn or whatever is actually pretty useful. Anyway, I absolutely agree – farmers are incredible! I have a whole new appreciation for farming equipment and farmers in general, just from playing this silly game.
- bombcar 3y ago
  I wonder how much it is like an aircraft - many many many dials and knobs, all with there purpose, but only a few needed in normal operation, or used once or twice a trip.
  - dguest 3y ago
    I assumed the purpose on an aircraft is a bit different: you don't want a "check engine" light to go on when you are 10 miles from the nearest landing strip. Probably a bit more detail is useful when a stalled engine means 50% odds of survival.

maxglute 3y ago

I mean does it have to? Looks like slapping a bunch of hardware to circumvent poor interoperability. And F35 cockpit has large single MFD, MFD setup of any 4+ generation fighter is 2-3 screens for what I imagine to be more complicated missions.

bluGill 3y ago
No, but this is a 10-20 year old planter where all the useful parts have been replaced with something from a different manufactures. Buy a new planter and more than half of those independent screens/controls go away. Buy a new tractor and another can go away. Buy a tractor and planter from the same manufacture and you can get down to just 1 (but realistically you have enough data to monitor that you would have 2-3). There is also the ISO11783 protocol which this tractor (which is at least 10 years old) has in the base model that could show everything, but the resolution available isn't really good and so while 3-5 controls could use that instead of a separate box, anything on a high resolution screen needs to stay. I don't know why the manufacture of those controls choose not to.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

AShyFig 3y ago

Is there anywhere I can anonymously upload an image to show off my own "spaceship tractor cab?" It's been awhile since I've tried, and it seems imgur no longer allows non-users to do this.

erikig 3y ago
I've used postimg.cc in the past, links are still live and it seems pretty anonymous.
TheNorthman 3y ago
Imgur should work fine. It at least does so for me. If not your style, https://imgbb.com https://imgbb.com is also an option. More ads, though But please do upload a picture. That would be interesting.
- AShyFig 3y ago
  Thanks! Imgur worked on my desktop. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39195506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39195506
  - TheNorthman 3y ago
    Very cool! While at uni, I worked on a local fishing boat doing (amongst many things) hardware/software integration, and did some work on equipment communicating via NMEA. Very fun blast-to-the-past, didn't know the standard was used outside of marine environments.

aidenn0 3y ago

They talk about GPS guided tractors for planting vs. using a marker wheel. I'm surprised GPS is accurate enough for that; are they using something like DGPS to get the needed accuracy?

supermatt 3y ago
GPS with RTK from a basestation. Get about 2.5cm accuracy.
FrankPetrilli 3y ago
GPS on its own especially with systems like WAAS is quite accurate these days, generally within a few meters. If you need more (which planting most crops does) there's also RTK [1], which permits centimeter-level accuracy from relatively inexpensive / simple setups. Here's an example of a local RTK base station with radio link in the industry [2], and additionally it's possible to get these corrections off cell network data connections [3]. Radio offers you more hyperlocal corrections which could improve accuracy a touch, but comes with all the downsides you'd expect of a local radio system so both are viable options. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_kinematic_positioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_kinematic_positionin... [2] https://www.deere.com/en/technology-products/precision-ag-technology/guidance/rtk-radio-900/ https://www.deere.com/en/technology-products/precision-ag-te... [3] https://www.deere.com/en/technology-products/precision-ag-technology/guidance/mobile-rtk/ https://www.deere.com/en/technology-products/precision-ag-te...
- aidenn0 3y ago
  Hmm, I always thought of RTK as including carrier-phase tracking, which would make it overkill for farming if the base-station is fixed (on the order of 2mm relative-position accuracy; absolute positional accuracy is not much better than DGPS without carrier phase-tracking). Wikipedia is ambiguous as to whether or not RTK necessarily includes carrier-phase tracking.
eschneider 3y ago
Tractors don't rely on _just_ GPS for planting, etc. They augment with some other technologies to get the necessary accuracy (a few cm of accuracy) for positioning.

dylan604 3y ago

I think it looks likes less like a space ship and looks closer to a modern music producer's work station.

falcolas 3y ago
I was thinking NOC myself. One monitor per major system being monitored. Not a ton of space ship vibe (especially the Dragon, for example), just a lot of poorly integrated individual systems that each comes with their own monitor and control system. Which is maybe better than a tightly integrated system when it comes to farming implements.
- pbourke 3y ago
  > Which is maybe better than a tightly integrated system when it comes to farming implements. He mentions swapping out components from last season a couple of times, so lack of integration is probably a feature.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    I don't see how farmers can afford to not use this tech, but I also don't understand how they can afford them. We constantly told about the thin margins farmers work with, which seems like the math to afford the payments on these machines ever work out. It also seems like this is one of those things that buying the base model is never enough. There were two different types of row cleaners in the front of the towed unit. There were devices at the back of each row that also seem like an add-on. The thing that presses the seeds down, and then the smart version that detected soil moisture and other info. Of course that's one of those 'for a small nominal fee' type of add-ons. John Deere seems to figure out how to keep his hand in the farmer's pocket eternally

rmason 3y ago

I left my career as an agronomist 25 years ago. That was around 8 years into the precision ag revolution. It was great to view this video, we only dreamed of this sort of control while planting back then. Everything was manual and getting everything calibrated was a dusty job for the farmer, setting something climbing back into the tractor, going a couple of hundred feet and then getting out to make another change. Once you got everything dialed in you rarely made many changes, The ability to change field by field or even in a field to adopt to different soil types is nothing short of amazing. Lots of times an individual row would stop planting and you wouldn't notice. I worked a lot with satellite infrared photos and it wasn't uncommon to look at a field and see an entire row missing or planted at a half rate. I predict in time though a lot of these screens will become less important as your AI agent will be making all these sorts of adjustments for you.

ballooney 3y ago

It feels like we’re in a bit of a nadir, agriculturally, in terms of soil exhaustion and erosion, crop monocultures, and so on, largely because of technology letting you do the same thing to bigger areas more quickly and with fewer people, and we’re reaching the end of the epoch where the cost of this can be blithely externalised. _However_, it seems like it could also be an inflection point, again because of technology. Imagine if tractors could tow behind them not a spraying trailer but a computer vision + laser system that could identify and zap individual weeds rather than napalming the whole ecosystem chemically, or that had arms that could pick only the correct, or ripe crop, or sub-varietal of crop, on a field planted with a variety of useful plants that balanced out the intensity with which they extracted nutrients from the soil. All of this at the cost/scale required to support the 8 billion (or so) people on the earth now with the agricultural land we have now, but perhaps too with the ability to open up more marginal bits of land to agriculture, and de-intensify the current wrung-to-death expanses of flat that we have to use now to accommodate the limitations of current farm machinery.

pests 3y ago
> a computer vision + laser system that could identify and zap individual weeds rather than napalming the whole ecosystem chemically > arms that could pick only the correct, or ripe crop, or sub-varietal of crop, on a field planted with a variety of useful plants I've seen demos for both of these in the last year or two.
bluGill 3y ago
Modern farmers using the best practices are building back soil not exhausting it. The typical practice since about 1980-1990 was holding the line, but research has found to how build up soil and a few farmers are employing it. While lasers are not used (yet?) you can now get sprayers that will spray chemical only on weeds and not the rest of the field. Or more likely you apply herbicide at a low dose across the whole field and then a high dose (possibly different chemical) where there is a weed.
Animats 3y ago
> Imagine if tractors could tow behind them not a spraying trailer but a computer vision + laser system that could identify and zap individual weeds. It exists. [1][2]. Robotic tractor, vision system, multiple 150W CO2 lasers. There is no such thing as overkill. It's really cool. "Certified Organic". A more practical approach is See and Spray.[3] Cameras and deep learning are taught to recognize and target enemy weeds. The sprayer has a valve for each nozzle, and it only zaps the weeds. Uses far less pesticide. For some crops a zap of spray fertilizer is used. The weeds overdose and die. That's now a John Deere product. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53Mma8IOEzc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53Mma8IOEzc [2] https://carbonrobotics.com/ https://carbonrobotics.com/ [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-EFtTa6IU& https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-EFtTa6IU&

ozim 3y ago

Well yeah GIT command line is insufferable interface it should be much simpler /s

AShyFig 3y ago

For those who are curious, here is the office view of my own "Spaceship tractor cab." https://imgur.com/a/ebUlEVy https://imgur.com/a/ebUlEVy Devices: Tractor - 1979 Versatile 875. Indestructible. Used for planting with a 40' air seeder. Trimble 500 - This is now a redundant GPS receiver which provides a special NEMA string to the device below it. Will stay in operation until I can figure out how to reliably duplicate said string via the primary GPS. PF3000 - Old reliable. This computer allows rudimentary tracking of loads to allow for seed and fertilizer rate experiments. Data is saved to a CF card for later transfer to SMS Basic or QGIS. CF-D1 Tablet - This handy bright touchscreen handles the signal from the primary GPS and RTK towers. It communicates with various sensors and a DC motor to steer the machine. Runs AgOpenGPS, a incredible godsend of a project which allows these kind of autosteer retrofits on old tractors for dirt cheap. Various camera screens to monitor the operations of an Air Seeder. You know what's cheaper and more reliable than airflow and runout sensors? Cameras. :) Hopefully I'll be able to upgrade these to IP cameras this spring, but for now they're all various brands of cheap wired "backup cameras." Agtron sensor monitor (canbus I think?) - This is supposed to monitor shaft RPMS and other various functions for the Air Seeder. It kinda works, but most functions are broken. AtomJet Aux Hydraulic system - Allows older tractors to handle newer more intensive implements. AgopenGPS control board (V2.. I think) - Takes Wheel Angle sensor data, GPS data, and Motion sensor Data, stews it all up on an Arduino nano and feeds that to the steeringwheel motor. Ardusimple GPS RTK2B - Primary GPS receiver and NEMA string generator. Not pictured - A streamdeck MK2 set up to control AgOpenGPS functions. Of dubious usefulness. :) Other future upgrades - Replacing the main hydraulic manifold block with electronic solenoids. This should allow AgOpenGPS to raise and lower the implement automatically, as well as control various functions of the air seeder. One more step on the road to total automation!

MrUnderhill 3y ago
What a beast! This is deserving of its own blog post and HN thread!

dtgriscom 3y ago

I looove learning about technology that I don't usually come into contact with. My dad was a doctor, and subscribed to the New England Journal of Medicine. The articles were opaque ("Defective Regulation of Inflammatory Mediators in Hodgkin's Disease — Supernormal Levels of Chemotactic-Factor Inactivator"??), but the ads were marvelous. Ultracentrifuges! Gel electrophoresis! Confocal microscopes! Electrosurgial units! Blood gas analyzers! Catnip for this budding engineer.