Cheap yield meter

Location
North
It's only a case of buying an antenna to plug into the box, the standard Ceres box itself can receive/decode the EGNOS.

Thanks, I did not know that even if I had browsed through the manual. Have considered to purchase one and was hoping to get it at a bit lower price without the GPS receiver but that doesn't work then.
 

Andrew1992

Member
Mixed Farmer
I have been looking into this recently too. I wanted to retrofit a simple system to an older machine. Trimble advised me that the cost for the actual system would be quite low. However, old Dominators and TX30 series had no handy, communication lines running past the main elevator, where the sensor would be mounted, to the cab. The price to purchase and install a cable to do the job was not justifiable.
 

Flat 10

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Fen Edge
I have been looking into this recently too. I wanted to retrofit a simple system to an older machine. Trimble advised me that the cost for the actual system would be quite low. However, old Dominators and TX30 series had no handy, communication lines running past the main elevator, where the sensor would be mounted, to the cab. The price to purchase and install a cable to do the job was not justifiable.
How come a cable is so expensive?
 
F9P reciever latest firmware is now Engnos capable. However on my testing its not a huge improvement on 3d without Egnos, due to the excellent performance of the dual frequency multi GNSS receiver. Its quite hard to pick out the Egnos vs non but from 4000 secs to 5000 secs is with Egnos. All figures fit in a 1 meter radius more than adequate for yield monitoring I think. You can pick out around 700 secs and 3200 secs where it was switched to three RTK basestations up to 50 miles away. If anything with Egnos has slightly less drift but more noise than normal 3D.
f9pEGNOStest.jpg
 

MKR

Member
Arable Farmer
Been looking for some cheap system for my old TX32. I think one of the cheapest should be Farm TRX which uses your smartphone or iPad or some other similar touch screen device as a display. Got already an offer for 2200€ from their distributor in France. Not bad, but have not ordered it yet. Do you have experience on this one?
 

MKR

Member
Arable Farmer
Been looking for some cheap system for my old TX32. I think one of the cheapest should be Farm TRX which uses your smartphone or iPad or some other similar touch screen device as a display. Got already an offer for 2200€ from their distributor in France. Not bad, but have not ordered it yet. Do you have experience on this one?
Anyone? Just seen on Claas dealer marketing the Ceres i8000 for over 4800€ exl VAT, so the price for Farm TRX seems very interesting. No one here in Finland seems to have it though, that is why it would be much appreciated if someone could share some experiences with that system before ordering. Didn't ask for the moisture sensor for TRX, that is lacking from the quoted price. I don't know why they even offer it without that. How much more for it?
 

DanniAgro

Member
As you probably know, there was an article in Farmers Weekly about it, but as it's new to this country no one, as far as I know, has installed it, so you might be one of the first in Europe if you bought it.
The article said that they were still working on the moisture measuring part of the meter, and expected it to be ready in the next year, so this is probably why you can't get a quote for it. If this part of it is important to you, perhaps you'd better get in touch with the Canadian makers and ask when they're likely to introduce it. Anyway hold off buying it for
 
Last edited:

Daniel

Member
We installed one this year, it cost £1900 inc this years subscription from Nick Abbey.

Worked well, although the app on the tablet could crash or refuse to connect via bluetooth to the box in the cab at times, the system was still recording data in the background.

The app and the in cab box had a couple of automatic updates during harvest which improved bluetooth connectivity.

This is the app, but obviously as they improve it it will look different over time. It gives you live data as you combine, we have a cheap galaxy tab a with a data sim on the 3 network which I use quite a lot around the yard. This connects via bluetooth to a box I mounted up in the cab fuse box. It downloads the yield data onto the tablet. Because the tablet has a sim in it you can then upload the data to the website whenever you like. If it didn't have a sim you would take it home and upload the data on wifi.
20200805_135537.jpg


The farmtrx website then does the data crunching in the cloud and presents you with pretty (or not so pretty!) maps.
20200810_104654.jpg


We were very pleased with it, the software was buggy, but the hardware never stopped recording and the data could always be recovered after restarting the app or the tablet. I think they'll have that sorted for next year.

There's also moisture meter for it, which we ordered but hasn't arrived yet. Only got one more field of spring wheat to cut next week so will have to report back on that next year!

In terms of calibration we have a 10 ton hopper on weigh cells back at the yard, so we weighed out the odd tankful into that and reported it back to Dad on the combine who could enter the correction. Not entirely sure how you would do it without some kind of weigher. But, you can correct after the event on the website, if you know what the sold weight was from each field.
 

MKR

Member
Arable Farmer
I even recorded a vid of it last week, had to upload it to Twitter to share with you lucky people!

Thanks all for replying. I thought everyone thought me being a troll to advertise own business as it was my first post to the forum... 😁

Sorry, not being seeing for the FW recently. Have to look for the article. In Finland used to browse more the local magazines... I am not in Twitter or Facebook and all the farming discussion seems to be on FB nowadays here.

Thank you Daniel, your vid opened a lot of things such as no maps without the subscription. I think this is how they plan to make the money...?

The moisture sensor is being installed to the grain elevator or the tank auger?
 

MKR

Member
Arable Farmer
Perhaps a Griffith-Elder Grain Brain would be cheap enough for your situation. It won’t yield map but it will tell you the Average yield/ha every time you unload your Combine
Already have an axle scale to know average yield for each field and total numbers for each crop but looking something more specific now. This also helps to calibrate the FarmTRX if will eventually buy one. Soon will be combining finally here also so maybe late for this season but have to look for the next one. Maybe we can also get some info from @Daniel of the moisture sensor then. At least of the installation. Shouldn't be a problem though.
 

Daniel

Member
Thanks all for replying. I thought everyone thought me being a troll to advertise own business as it was my first post to the forum... 😁

Sorry, not being seeing for the FW recently. Have to look for the article. In Finland used to browse more the local magazines... I am not in Twitter or Facebook and all the farming discussion seems to be on FB nowadays here.

Thank you Daniel, your vid opened a lot of things such as no maps without the subscription. I think this is how they plan to make the money...?

The moisture sensor is being installed to the grain elevator or the tank auger?

I think it fits on the bottom of the grain elevator.
 

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