Slashdot Mirror
Farmers Struggling With High-Tech Farm Equipment
An anonymous reader writes: Farming is a difficult profession. One of the constants throughout the generations is that if you're working out in the field all day, machinery eventually breaks down. Farmers tend to deal with this harsh reality by becoming handy at basic repair — but that strategy is starting to fail in the digital age. Kyle Wiens, founder of iFixit, writes about the new difficulties in repairing your broken tractors and other equipment. Not only do you often need experience in computer software, but proprietary technology actively blocks you from making repairs.
"Dave asked me if there was some way to bypass a bum sensor while waiting for the repairman to show up. But fixing Dave's sensor problem required fiddling around in the tractor's highly proprietary computer system—the tractor's engine control unit (tECU): the brains behind the agricultural beast. One hour later, I hopped back out of the cab of the tractor. Defeated. I was unable to breach the wall of proprietary defenses that protected the tECU like a fortress. I couldn't even connect to the computer. Because John Deere says I can't." Wiens also tells us about Farm Hack, a community that has sprung up to build a library of open source tools and knowledge for dealing with high-tech modification and repair in agriculture.
"Dave asked me if there was some way to bypass a bum sensor while waiting for the repairman to show up. But fixing Dave's sensor problem required fiddling around in the tractor's highly proprietary computer system—the tractor's engine control unit (tECU): the brains behind the agricultural beast. One hour later, I hopped back out of the cab of the tractor. Defeated. I was unable to breach the wall of proprietary defenses that protected the tECU like a fortress. I couldn't even connect to the computer. Because John Deere says I can't." Wiens also tells us about Farm Hack, a community that has sprung up to build a library of open source tools and knowledge for dealing with high-tech modification and repair in agriculture.
Most 'farms' in america are part of multinational food corporations like Cargill and ADM. They have motor pools to repair fleets of farm equipment like tractors and harvesters. firmware updates and engine maintenance are often performed by representatives of the companies that manufacture the equipment. IT and information systems departments handle things like GPS and computer software and hardware related to the harvest. small, agrarian farming is almost obsolete in America unless you look into how poulty and pork are raised. In these cases its small contract farmers working for larger entities like Hormell. Even these small farmers though are forced into the disposable economy of modernization that takes them out of the direct path of machines they can work on.
Growing up on a farm in Ohio I remember having to weld equipment back together. I remember cleaning carbureators, hammering out feeders, and changing fluids. It was not fun, and it often meant drastic inefficiencies like having to leave hay out too long or work two days straight trying to get things in order after a break. In a lot of ways modern equipment is more resillient and not as prone to problems. these engine computers save a ton of fuel and effort. coupling, power takeoff, gears, speed, you name it and its probably in the hands of the computer. If i had to do it all over, I'd miss my old ford tractor but i wouldn't miss how it sputtered in cold weather.
Good people go to bed earlier.
This isn't actually the case. I know of no Federal regulation that disallows adjustments by a particular party. All that the regulations require is that there be no unauthorized modifications to the system. They don't place the onus on anyone to prevent such modifications in any particular way.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Farmers are historically bigoted on their equiptment. Its a matter of differences and dificulty in changing impliments. They won't just switch out because of the amount of relearning, differences in operationing, and costs of changing or replacing their attachments.
Mega commercial farms may be different. But the farmer with less than 1000 acres will trend this way. One of my neighbors still mows and rakes hay with a tractor from 1968 because of this. He uses a different tractor to bail becaise the bailer broke and he found one for his planter tractor (mid 90's) at a better price that was faster than fixing the older one.
Dongles are cheap. The information they give you is fairly useless in diagnosing specific hardware faults, sensor codes, etc unless you have the factory proprietary software.
Want to modulate the ABS module to purge air and replace the brake fluid? Sorry.
Want to see which wheel is giving you the TPMS low pressure error even though they are all properly inflated? Sorry.
Want to see specifically why a code is being thrown that disengages the AWD? Sorry.
Well, sorry for me unless I get a Tech2 scanner maybe for $1500 used, or $4000 new off fleabay.
The engine is just one "node" on the bus and in my experience isn't really a problem very often. Typical problem would beit something else on the bus, ie switch for hydraulic valve stepper motor.
There are basically 4 tractor companies and they are all world-wide, so yes EPA matters and has to be met, as well as everywhere else.
When your tractor is down and rain is coming you want quick solutions.
New tractors have a big lcd screen, they could have more online solutions and all documentation, etc. but service is where dealerships make their money and they want you to call them and pay 120$ an hour to have a kid sit in the cab with a laptop and read how to fix it in JD service advisor. A customer can't legally buy the tools the dealer has to fix there tractor. This is wrong and should be illegal.
The arguments about emissions tempering are valid, but there are existing laws for that, just because one way is easier to enforce doesn't make it right.
Just to be clear, and responding to the NMEA comment, when it comes to mapping and field prescriptions, all the major systems will accept GPS from just about any receiver via a serial connection (NMEA or some other). It's the guidance part of the computer that is locked to vendor-specific receivers. There's no reason at all for this vendor lock except to guarantee you will be paying a subscription for correction signals from the vendor. In my mind this area is ripe for disruption. The sooner we can get cheap RTK GPS positioning the better. And even if it means replacing the hydraulic steering valve, if there's an open. hackable GPS guidance system out there, I and many farmers will move to it.
One guy using a laptop and arduino made his own GPS guidance system. Very cool stuff:
http://forum.arduino.cc/index....
So it's still possible to do incredibly cool hacks.
That said, the proprietary solutions do work very well and are well-integrated