So How is Autonomous Supposed to Work?

[Spock]

Not meant to be political and I might post something on the regular bored to direct any interest this way. But, upon reflection-I put it here.

Our previous corn planter was about 11 years old and for the last couple of years we have had a lot of mechanical and communication/electronic issues with it.

So it was time for a new one. We bought a new John Deere 12-row 30 inch planter. This means it plants 12 rows of corn (or soybeans) 30 inches apart. This is on the smaller side of new planters today as many are 24 to 36 rows and maybe even bigger. A 12-row might be a little small for the amount of land we farm-but we have a lot of smaller, odd shaped fields where this size works best.

So with the dealership's help we got going on planting last Monday-(I think) and it worked pretty well for the first few hours.

Then the electronic crap hit the fan-and believe you me-there is an overabundance of electronic crap on these new planters.

It started throwing error code after error code after error code which stops the planting process. So you have to stop-clear the codes-maybe shut the whole system down and back up a little and start planting again. I was fortunate to be able to make it from one end of the field to the other error-free.

Well, after this happened a few times-I saw that this was going to be an on-going problem and got the local John Deere dealership working on it.

Several technician trips to the farm ensued without much progress, but I was able to limp along and get some planting done. Meanwhile, they started the process of contacting and working John Deere engineers about the problem.

Friday morning, one of the technicians had an idea and tried something and it worked perfect from about 10:30 AM to 5PM. I was just ready to call the dealership and let them know that things looked good.

Then the crap storm hit again, but even worse, there were new error codes showing up that I couldn't clear and when they hit I was simply done.

Friday night, they wanted to try a different tractor-in case the problem was our tractor.

Short answer-we learned very quickly on Saturday morning that our tractor wasn't the problem as the error storm came up even quicker and harder.

So today (Monday) the tractor and planter are at the John Deere dealership and there is an engineer from John Deere there as well. FTR-John Deere dealerships are separate businesses from John Deere itself-like a car dealership I guess.

The last I heard was they were not finding anything. But I have tried to be very clear that "It worked at the dealership" is not an acceptable answer.

They are lining up another planter for us to use-a 16-row which won't fit the other equipment we use-but at this point, beggars can't be choosers.

Just about every farm magazine has an article about autonomous farm equipment coming down the pike. Yeah, let's make everything even more electronic. Engineers got to play I guess.

One theory batted around is that a lot of our land is under a high-voltage powerline and there are thoughts that might have an effect.

All week, I was basically planting under the lines and it kinda sorta worked when I went to a field a mile away. But on Saturday,being away from the powerline did not have an effect on the whole crapstorm.

I can handle the frustration pretty well-L'il Spock not so much.

[Ritterskoop]

A lot of tech does not work very well at first, and has to be tested in the field. Literally, that is what you are doing for them.

Think of it as being in beta, if that means anything to you.

It's why I rarely upgrade my OS to the newest deal until other people have worked out the kinks first.

[Bob Juch]

A lot of tech does not work very well at first, and has to be tested in the field. Literally, that is what you are doing for them.

Think of it as being in beta, if that means anything to you.

It's why I rarely upgrade my OS to the newest deal until other people have worked out the kinks first.

That's what most of my clients do with their IBM mainframe software. They run the current-1 (minus one) versions, and the monthly fixes are applied only after six months under most circumstances.