12 ms·

Solar Storm Knocks Out Farmers' Tractor GPS Systems During Peak Planting Season

124 points by dopylitty 2y ago

Waterluvian 2y ago
RTK GPS is such a cool technology. Maybe it’s because my undergrad was filled with inaccurate data but turning on a unit and having 1cm accuracy still feels like magic.
- the__alchemist 2y ago
  Yes it's nuts! You need a more expensive GPS chip (eg Ublox 9 series), and a base station, but is great for certain applications.
  - Waterluvian 2y ago
    Years ago I experimented with this really cheap GPS. Pixi or something like that. It had poor ergonomics and as difficult to establish a connection. But once it worked it was accurate. Was like 1/10th the cost. Also there’s VRS RTK without a base station (but you need internet and a subscription) for some reasons. Works just as well. It’s basically turn key.
    - foobarbecue 2y ago
      Yeah, I remember the Pixi (sp?) kickstarter, back in the heyday of ArduCopter. There was a brief period there where open-source, open-hardware, DIY got you the best results for multicopters.
    - twobitshifter 2y ago
      You can also use RTK2Go for free or contribute to it with your own base station. http://rtk2go.com/ http://rtk2go.com/
- thelastparadise 2y ago
  Just deployed a Segway Navimow which uses RTK + vision for navigation. Going from Landroid (wired, fails frequently) to Husqvarna Automower (wired, fairly reliable) to now a GPS RTK solution is quite the leap in technology. Husqvarna does have an RTK unit but it is quite pricey ($6K). The Navimow is surprisingly inexpensive ($999 for entry level unit). The Mammotion Luba 2 is sort of in-between. The RTK units are only becoming widely available in the last year or so. I just so happened to set it up on solar flare day so it's hard for me to say how much that impacted it. It does seem to have a much more consistent signal today, though. It's quite something to see it precisely drive from one end of the garden to the other, especially after years of managing wires. I would say the RTK is quite good and accessible at this point. It does require placing the base unit in a place with both a good view of as much sky as possible, as well as being able to communicate on 900mhz to the bot. The bot itself receives GPS signals as well as the 900mhz. The tower and the bot have to see ~5+ of the same satellites at the same time. This is why it's key for the base station to have a good sky view --the bot will constantly be seeing a different subset of satellites, so you want the base station to see "all of them" if possible. My dream outdoor bot would use a combo of RTK, lidar, vision, as well as WiFi positioning techniques. I wonder how accurate that could get? Maybe overkill (RTK alone seems "good enough," but there's still a gap between precision of these outdoor bots and, say, lidar-based indoor vacuum robots. Oh yeah, the dream bot would also use photogrammetry plus all the other data to reconstruct a full detailed mesh of the outside.
  - hagbard_c 2y ago
    I deployed a fully autonomous automower a few years ago which navigates by sight, sound and terrain-following sensors. It is guided by visual cues which tell it within which area it is supposed to keep the vegetation short. It does not need to be guided any further since it senses where the vegetation is in need of clipping. One of the best things about this system is that it does not require charging since it actually runs on the clippings it harvests. The remarkable thing about this solution is that it is not new, the current incarnation is 33 years old. It has self-reproduced twice. It is a small to medium sized Welsh mountain pony, keeper of grounds here at our farm.
    - 2y ago
jmclnx 2y ago
Why does a farmer need GPS to plow a field ? >These automated systems have become critical to modern farming (often called “precision agriculture”), with farmers using increasingly automated tractors to plant crops in perfectly straight lines with uniform spacing. Precision agriculture has greatly increased the yield of farms I guess this is why, but is the increased yield really worth all the issues I hear about these tractors ?
- bluGill 2y ago
  I work for John Deere, though I don't speak for the company. Every time I tell a farmer I work with the displays they tell me that they won't plant without the GPS. They will sometimes drive the combine by hand, but there is enough additional profit in GPS planting that nobody will drive a planter by hand. Corn does is very picky about how close it is planted to other plants - too close or too far apart will reduce yields and the GPS can optimize that by enough to be worth it. Even in the combine case, if there is bad storm damage they won't drive by hand as the GPS can find the rows and thus harvest a lot more crop. Every couple years there will be a field storm damaged bad enough that it would be a total loss if they had to drive the combine by hand, but the GPS can find the rows and so there isn't even an insurance claim (crop insurance insures you will get your average yields over the previous 10 year, so if you have a total loss crop that brings your average yields way down for the next 10 years which means a future disaster crop gets bad payout)
- stoolpigeon 2y ago
  I had a discussion with an engineer from John Deer, I'm not a farmer and don't have direct experience with it so I am taking his word but he told me in most cases the person in the tractor is just there to monitor what's going on for safety. I imagine this frees up people for other work if someone maybe less qualified can be in the tractor, or just takes the load off so they can work longer, allow them to do more in less time, etc.
- Waterluvian 2y ago
  I think modern farming is heavily about optimization.
- 2y ago
slg 2y ago
For one of the worst solar storms of the modern technological era and the worst in 20+ years, I have been pleasantly surprised by the limited number of issues like this that have actually popped up.
- deadbabe 2y ago
  Makes me feel like the threat of modern civilization being wiped out by a bad solar storm is overblown.
  - cthalupa 2y ago
    We've done a lot to develop protections for these systems after the Quebec incident, and we saw multiple providers, including PJM, actively need to use these protections over the weekend. And this storm was significantly lower in intensity than the Carrington event. Why would you conclude that, because a far weaker storm than one that has occurred in modern history didn't destroy civilization, that the fear of a far stronger storm is overblown? We don't have to guess what the damage would be from that sort of storm - we know why it caused the damage we did, and we can understand the damage it would do to modern infrastructure if not protected against. If we continue to harden the grid against these storms, we might well be able to survive a Carrington (or stronger) level storm, but it will be because we took the proper precautions because we understand how big the risk is.
  - fallingsquirrel 2y ago
    Not all solar storms are equally strong. Don't assume that because you're not hurt in a 10mph crash, you also won't be hurt in a 60mph crash.
  - hackerlight 2y ago
    That's extrapolating a lot from a low G5 storm. This wasn't a Carrington event. And storms can be worse than a Carrington event, even though that's unlikely.
    - deadbabe 2y ago
ck2 2y ago
somehow coincidentally watching a neat freevee documentary right this minute on the sun, covers solar wind, solar storms and Parker probe, etc. https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0B8Q3F29S https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0B8Q3F29S the other space episodes are also well done
m0llusk 2y ago
We really need a strategic transformer reserve. Maybe this could be done as a global international effort since so much commerce is on the line.
- hoffs 2y ago
  What does this have to do with failing gps devices
  - quickthrowman 2y ago
    A sufficiently powerful solar storm could fry most or all of the energized transformers in its path through induction causing overheating. Without transformers you have no electrical distribution, which would lead to societal collapse very quickly, as there are not enough spare transformers to replace all of the existing ones. We are heavily reliant on refrigerated supply chains for food distribution. Without electricity, all of the other utilities you rely on would cease. Water, natural gas, internet, sewer, etc all require electricity.
    - the8472 2y ago
      wouldn't disconnecting them during the event prevent that?
      - hackerlight 2y ago
        Are forecasting models accurate enough to know when disconnection is necessary? We know how strong the CMEs are but not how they'll recombine on their way to earth.
        RachelM71948937 2y ago
        [dead]
      - alwa 2y ago
        To an extent, sure. But then part of the problem is that these are planet-scale events: you’d need to disconnect them all at once (coordinating that between independent operators, and as I understand it isolating these giant grid-scale transformers isn’t just a question of flipping a switch). Then you need to ramp down power production in a balanced way as you ramp down places for it to go, and if you succeed at the whole endeavor then you don’t have a grid anymore. Even if it’s possible to do that before the storm, it’s hard to know whether it’s possible to “cold start” the grid at all, much less timely.
neilv 2y ago
> "StarFire” receivers Sounds accurate.
Grimeton 2y ago
[flagged]
nashashmi 2y ago
If farmers have such heavy reliance on gps, why not use local positioning systems like AGPS networks? Why are local base stations affected? Do they consistently need satellite gps data? If the satellites go missing for a few days, would that mean local base stations won’t work? I have worked with rtk before, but i never understood why not setup your own personal base station network.
- bluGill 2y ago
  > i never understood why not setup your own personal base station network. You can, and that used to be common. Some years ago most farmers sold their personal base stations to the local dealer because by doing that the dealer gave their far fields access to a different RTK base station, while before the signals from their personal base station didn't reach the distance fields at all. Plus the dealer maintains the base stations - they are best placed where they are likely to be hit by lightening so someone else taking that risk is overall worth it.
- micromacrofoot 2y ago
  most people don’t waste money on solving a problem that happens maybe 1% of the time, gps is very reliable
- jhayward 2y ago
  There are some misunderstandings in the above. 1) AGPS is not local positioning. It is a "speed-up" assist from cellular networks to provide the Almanac (e.g., satellite orbit info) quicker than a GPS receiver can get it from the satellites. All AGPS receivers use the actual GPS satellite signals to calculate the receiver's position. No sats, no position. 2) RTK does not provide a local positioning system. RTK allows a base station receiver, which is in a stable/not-moving site, to observe GPS position calculations over a long period of time and 'averages' the positions to arrive at a highly precise position for itself. It then monitors the real-time positions it calculates and broadcasts a list of error corrections to be applied to the satellite signals to reduce the real-time error, which is constantly changing. Again, no sats, no pos.
  - 2y ago
b112 2y ago
John Deere, again. A system that doesn't even warn when accuracy is reduced, and instead just acts as if all is OK, recording incorrect info for future use. When I bought my lawn tractor(mower), I made sure not to buy John Deere.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  Sounds more like the system didn't know the accuracy was reduced. It indicated that it was planting a straight row, but was wandering around. Maybe it lacks some sanity checks, e.g. "I should not need to be moving the steering this much to stay on a straight line"
  - b112 2y ago
    Sounds more like the system didn't know the accuracy was reduced Which is a bug, because either they had fewer satellites to lock onto, or they had conflicting data from them. GPS accuracy issues are solved in trillions of devices around the world. This is the same company that has evil vendor lock ins, they're just a malign entity.
    - bluGill 2y ago
      > they had conflicting data from them. Very likely. Normally we can assume that if the base station is not where we think it is the base station didn't move and so therefore that is how far off the current GPS signals are and so we can tell the tractor to correct by the same amount. However if the tractor and base station are receiving different answers we have no way to detect that. > GPS accuracy issues are solved in trillions of devices around the world. They are IGNORED in trillions of devices around the world, not solved. Normal GPS is at best to within a few meters. Most of the time that is good enough - if you are within 10 meters of where you want to be most people can look up and see the door and get there. (the blind would have trouble). If you are trying to guide something to within 2 cm GPS is only solved if you can make some assumptions that normally hold by didn't. This isn't a bug - at least not until someone can explain how we can fix it. I work for John Deere, but do not speak for the company. I do not work in the GPS area, I've talked to a few of those engineers but I don't have any more knowledge that is public.
tbeseda 2y ago
I've seen several posts on TikTok from idle farmers sitting in their planters looking across huge fields at their neighbors sitting in their idle planters. Fascinating to see the effects propagate across different mediums. (unsure how I ended up on farmer TikTok - probably my interest in "big machines")
- downrightmike 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - pyvpx 2y ago
    god forbid you learn anything about where your food comes from today
    - downrightmike 2y ago
      Can't reap it if you don't sow it.
  - kayfox 2y ago
    The GPS data is needed to log the planting, modern farmers use a lot of statistics and data analysis to increase yield. In the case of planting, the position of planting is stored so the machinery wont run it over or double plant. Later seed quantity and distribution is analyzed against yield when harvesting to hone down on the best parameters for the crop and field.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

124 points by dopylitty 2y ago

RTK GPS is such a cool technology. Maybe it’s because my undergrad was filled with inaccurate data but turning on a unit and having 1cm accuracy still feels like magic.

the__alchemist 2y ago
Yes it's nuts! You need a more expensive GPS chip (eg Ublox 9 series), and a base station, but is great for certain applications.
- Waterluvian 2y ago
  Years ago I experimented with this really cheap GPS. Pixi or something like that. It had poor ergonomics and as difficult to establish a connection. But once it worked it was accurate. Was like 1/10th the cost. Also there’s VRS RTK without a base station (but you need internet and a subscription) for some reasons. Works just as well. It’s basically turn key.
  - foobarbecue 2y ago
    Yeah, I remember the Pixi (sp?) kickstarter, back in the heyday of ArduCopter. There was a brief period there where open-source, open-hardware, DIY got you the best results for multicopters.
  - twobitshifter 2y ago
    You can also use RTK2Go for free or contribute to it with your own base station. http://rtk2go.com/ http://rtk2go.com/
thelastparadise 2y ago
Just deployed a Segway Navimow which uses RTK + vision for navigation. Going from Landroid (wired, fails frequently) to Husqvarna Automower (wired, fairly reliable) to now a GPS RTK solution is quite the leap in technology. Husqvarna does have an RTK unit but it is quite pricey ($6K). The Navimow is surprisingly inexpensive ($999 for entry level unit). The Mammotion Luba 2 is sort of in-between. The RTK units are only becoming widely available in the last year or so. I just so happened to set it up on solar flare day so it's hard for me to say how much that impacted it. It does seem to have a much more consistent signal today, though. It's quite something to see it precisely drive from one end of the garden to the other, especially after years of managing wires. I would say the RTK is quite good and accessible at this point. It does require placing the base unit in a place with both a good view of as much sky as possible, as well as being able to communicate on 900mhz to the bot. The bot itself receives GPS signals as well as the 900mhz. The tower and the bot have to see ~5+ of the same satellites at the same time. This is why it's key for the base station to have a good sky view --the bot will constantly be seeing a different subset of satellites, so you want the base station to see "all of them" if possible. My dream outdoor bot would use a combo of RTK, lidar, vision, as well as WiFi positioning techniques. I wonder how accurate that could get? Maybe overkill (RTK alone seems "good enough," but there's still a gap between precision of these outdoor bots and, say, lidar-based indoor vacuum robots. Oh yeah, the dream bot would also use photogrammetry plus all the other data to reconstruct a full detailed mesh of the outside.
- hagbard_c 2y ago
  I deployed a fully autonomous automower a few years ago which navigates by sight, sound and terrain-following sensors. It is guided by visual cues which tell it within which area it is supposed to keep the vegetation short. It does not need to be guided any further since it senses where the vegetation is in need of clipping. One of the best things about this system is that it does not require charging since it actually runs on the clippings it harvests. The remarkable thing about this solution is that it is not new, the current incarnation is 33 years old. It has self-reproduced twice. It is a small to medium sized Welsh mountain pony, keeper of grounds here at our farm.
  - 2y ago

jmclnx 2y ago

Why does a farmer need GPS to plow a field ? >These automated systems have become critical to modern farming (often called “precision agriculture”), with farmers using increasingly automated tractors to plant crops in perfectly straight lines with uniform spacing. Precision agriculture has greatly increased the yield of farms I guess this is why, but is the increased yield really worth all the issues I hear about these tractors ?

bluGill 2y ago
I work for John Deere, though I don't speak for the company. Every time I tell a farmer I work with the displays they tell me that they won't plant without the GPS. They will sometimes drive the combine by hand, but there is enough additional profit in GPS planting that nobody will drive a planter by hand. Corn does is very picky about how close it is planted to other plants - too close or too far apart will reduce yields and the GPS can optimize that by enough to be worth it. Even in the combine case, if there is bad storm damage they won't drive by hand as the GPS can find the rows and thus harvest a lot more crop. Every couple years there will be a field storm damaged bad enough that it would be a total loss if they had to drive the combine by hand, but the GPS can find the rows and so there isn't even an insurance claim (crop insurance insures you will get your average yields over the previous 10 year, so if you have a total loss crop that brings your average yields way down for the next 10 years which means a future disaster crop gets bad payout)
stoolpigeon 2y ago
I had a discussion with an engineer from John Deer, I'm not a farmer and don't have direct experience with it so I am taking his word but he told me in most cases the person in the tractor is just there to monitor what's going on for safety. I imagine this frees up people for other work if someone maybe less qualified can be in the tractor, or just takes the load off so they can work longer, allow them to do more in less time, etc.
Waterluvian 2y ago
I think modern farming is heavily about optimization.
2y ago

slg 2y ago

For one of the worst solar storms of the modern technological era and the worst in 20+ years, I have been pleasantly surprised by the limited number of issues like this that have actually popped up.

deadbabe 2y ago
Makes me feel like the threat of modern civilization being wiped out by a bad solar storm is overblown.
- cthalupa 2y ago
  We've done a lot to develop protections for these systems after the Quebec incident, and we saw multiple providers, including PJM, actively need to use these protections over the weekend. And this storm was significantly lower in intensity than the Carrington event. Why would you conclude that, because a far weaker storm than one that has occurred in modern history didn't destroy civilization, that the fear of a far stronger storm is overblown? We don't have to guess what the damage would be from that sort of storm - we know why it caused the damage we did, and we can understand the damage it would do to modern infrastructure if not protected against. If we continue to harden the grid against these storms, we might well be able to survive a Carrington (or stronger) level storm, but it will be because we took the proper precautions because we understand how big the risk is.
- fallingsquirrel 2y ago
  Not all solar storms are equally strong. Don't assume that because you're not hurt in a 10mph crash, you also won't be hurt in a 60mph crash.
- hackerlight 2y ago
  That's extrapolating a lot from a low G5 storm. This wasn't a Carrington event. And storms can be worse than a Carrington event, even though that's unlikely.
  - deadbabe 2y ago

ck2 2y ago

somehow coincidentally watching a neat freevee documentary right this minute on the sun, covers solar wind, solar storms and Parker probe, etc. https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0B8Q3F29S https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0B8Q3F29S the other space episodes are also well done

m0llusk 2y ago

We really need a strategic transformer reserve. Maybe this could be done as a global international effort since so much commerce is on the line.

hoffs 2y ago
What does this have to do with failing gps devices
- quickthrowman 2y ago
  A sufficiently powerful solar storm could fry most or all of the energized transformers in its path through induction causing overheating. Without transformers you have no electrical distribution, which would lead to societal collapse very quickly, as there are not enough spare transformers to replace all of the existing ones. We are heavily reliant on refrigerated supply chains for food distribution. Without electricity, all of the other utilities you rely on would cease. Water, natural gas, internet, sewer, etc all require electricity.
  - the8472 2y ago
    wouldn't disconnecting them during the event prevent that?
    - hackerlight 2y ago
      Are forecasting models accurate enough to know when disconnection is necessary? We know how strong the CMEs are but not how they'll recombine on their way to earth.
      - RachelM71948937 2y ago
        [dead]
    - alwa 2y ago
      To an extent, sure. But then part of the problem is that these are planet-scale events: you’d need to disconnect them all at once (coordinating that between independent operators, and as I understand it isolating these giant grid-scale transformers isn’t just a question of flipping a switch). Then you need to ramp down power production in a balanced way as you ramp down places for it to go, and if you succeed at the whole endeavor then you don’t have a grid anymore. Even if it’s possible to do that before the storm, it’s hard to know whether it’s possible to “cold start” the grid at all, much less timely.

neilv 2y ago

> "StarFire” receivers Sounds accurate.

Grimeton 2y ago

[flagged]

nashashmi 2y ago

If farmers have such heavy reliance on gps, why not use local positioning systems like AGPS networks? Why are local base stations affected? Do they consistently need satellite gps data? If the satellites go missing for a few days, would that mean local base stations won’t work? I have worked with rtk before, but i never understood why not setup your own personal base station network.

bluGill 2y ago
> i never understood why not setup your own personal base station network. You can, and that used to be common. Some years ago most farmers sold their personal base stations to the local dealer because by doing that the dealer gave their far fields access to a different RTK base station, while before the signals from their personal base station didn't reach the distance fields at all. Plus the dealer maintains the base stations - they are best placed where they are likely to be hit by lightening so someone else taking that risk is overall worth it.
micromacrofoot 2y ago
most people don’t waste money on solving a problem that happens maybe 1% of the time, gps is very reliable
jhayward 2y ago
There are some misunderstandings in the above. 1) AGPS is not local positioning. It is a "speed-up" assist from cellular networks to provide the Almanac (e.g., satellite orbit info) quicker than a GPS receiver can get it from the satellites. All AGPS receivers use the actual GPS satellite signals to calculate the receiver's position. No sats, no position. 2) RTK does not provide a local positioning system. RTK allows a base station receiver, which is in a stable/not-moving site, to observe GPS position calculations over a long period of time and 'averages' the positions to arrive at a highly precise position for itself. It then monitors the real-time positions it calculates and broadcasts a list of error corrections to be applied to the satellite signals to reduce the real-time error, which is constantly changing. Again, no sats, no pos.
- 2y ago

b112 2y ago

John Deere, again. A system that doesn't even warn when accuracy is reduced, and instead just acts as if all is OK, recording incorrect info for future use. When I bought my lawn tractor(mower), I made sure not to buy John Deere.

SoftTalker 2y ago
Sounds more like the system didn't know the accuracy was reduced. It indicated that it was planting a straight row, but was wandering around. Maybe it lacks some sanity checks, e.g. "I should not need to be moving the steering this much to stay on a straight line"
- b112 2y ago
  Sounds more like the system didn't know the accuracy was reduced Which is a bug, because either they had fewer satellites to lock onto, or they had conflicting data from them. GPS accuracy issues are solved in trillions of devices around the world. This is the same company that has evil vendor lock ins, they're just a malign entity.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    > they had conflicting data from them. Very likely. Normally we can assume that if the base station is not where we think it is the base station didn't move and so therefore that is how far off the current GPS signals are and so we can tell the tractor to correct by the same amount. However if the tractor and base station are receiving different answers we have no way to detect that. > GPS accuracy issues are solved in trillions of devices around the world. They are IGNORED in trillions of devices around the world, not solved. Normal GPS is at best to within a few meters. Most of the time that is good enough - if you are within 10 meters of where you want to be most people can look up and see the door and get there. (the blind would have trouble). If you are trying to guide something to within 2 cm GPS is only solved if you can make some assumptions that normally hold by didn't. This isn't a bug - at least not until someone can explain how we can fix it. I work for John Deere, but do not speak for the company. I do not work in the GPS area, I've talked to a few of those engineers but I don't have any more knowledge that is public.

tbeseda 2y ago

I've seen several posts on TikTok from idle farmers sitting in their planters looking across huge fields at their neighbors sitting in their idle planters. Fascinating to see the effects propagate across different mediums. (unsure how I ended up on farmer TikTok - probably my interest in "big machines")

downrightmike 2y ago
[flagged]
- pyvpx 2y ago
  god forbid you learn anything about where your food comes from today
  - downrightmike 2y ago
    Can't reap it if you don't sow it.
- kayfox 2y ago
  The GPS data is needed to log the planting, modern farmers use a lot of statistics and data analysis to increase yield. In the case of planting, the position of planting is stored so the machinery wont run it over or double plant. Later seed quantity and distribution is analyzed against yield when harvesting to hone down on the best parameters for the crop and field.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]