Deere’s Digital Ecosystem receives ‘near real-time’ monitoring update

An update to John Deere’s tracking software will allow farmers to monitor their machinery in near real-time.

The update to John Deere’s Digital Ecosystem will see an improvement to the speed at which farmers can monitor the movement of their equipment, providing a more accurate indication of performance in the field.

Equipment locations will now be updated every five seconds – up from 30-60 seconds – while work information such as totals and averages will be refreshed every 30 seconds rather than the previous 10-30 minutes through the John Deere Operations Centre mobile.

John Deere ANZ precision agriculture manager Benji Blevin says the new technology will help minimize errors in the field.

“This near real-time technology will allow farmers, at a glance, to see exactly where their equipment is in the paddock,” Blevin says.
“It will give them the power to check the machine is running on the correct settings to optimise performance, and they will know the precise progress that is being made in the field.

“For example, during planting, this will mean farmers and contractors will know where the seeder is in the paddock and assess when it will need refilling. During spraying and fertilising, they will be able to see the inputs being placed in the paddock at the field or machine level, very close to real-time.

Available from mid-March, the update and will be obtainable to all John Deere users who have the Gen 4 display and a 4G MTG connection with JDLink.

The update will also include other new functions including improvements to the AutoTrac Turn Automation (ATTA) which will allow farmers to perform smooth and accurate turns on headlands and will ensure the planting of seeds remains consistent and accurate.

The ATTA will also see the introduction of AutoPath, a new compatibility function aimed at keeping machines within the permitted boundaries including A-B Curve guidance lines and a new figure of eight turn.

Using the Gen 4 display, users will also be able to record and scribe notes while in the paddock, which is then sent wirelessly to the Operations Centre for later review.

Harvesting of cotton looms as one of the biggest beneficiaries of the update, which allows for improved reporting and easier access to data related to cotton bales in the Operations Centre (through the analyse tool), and also to stakeholders in the supply chain.
Harvest ID (HID) cotton will use radio-frequency identification on John Deere CP690 cotton-picker and CS690 cotton stripper to read a module serial number from RFID tags found within bale wraps to do so.
“The module serial number is not only read, it is enhanced with information about the client, farm, field, and cotton variety, which is combined with the machine identifier details, plus, the date, time, and GPS position of where the module was wrapped,” Blevin says.

“This is important to help farmers better understand yield performance and to monitor the quality of their crop while simplifying bale handling.

“Processing is also streamlined because as soon as the gin takes receipt of a cotton bale it can quickly identify key information such as where it was grown when it was wrapped and what variety it is. The gin can also easily report back to the producer when their crop is being processed and what results were achieved.

“There are also considerable advantages in terms of the industry being able to demonstrate transparency to the supply chain, as they can see the complete journey of cotton from the farm where it was grown, all the way to when and where it was made into a textile.”