Closed my eyes, crossed me fingers and sent €7000 (around £6300) to a Dutch bank account! This should get me a complete RTK retrofit autosteer setup and an L1/L2 base station to use across the farm with LoRa to avoid setting up Ntrip. It should also get me extra brackets and harnesses to move the unit between my two wee fendts without much bother. I'm gonna drill at 150mm centres with the 415 and interrow weed using 75mm tines with the 312. Will report once I'm up and running. Hopefully....
Fieldbee
- Thread starter scotston
- Start date
PJ Walker @ RTK Farming
Member
- Location
- Chatteris, Cambridgeshire
Good luck, Would like to see it when it's up and running
- Location
- Veurne, Belgium
Hi Scotston, did you already receive your order?
I am a farmer from Belgium and I already use the Fieldbee L1 antenna and Fieldbee app for 3 years now (manual steering).
I am very pleased with the possibilities and the result of the parallel tracking for spraying, sowing, mowing, ... (even with manual steering).
Great, I for one will be watching VERY closely as to how you get one.
Lots of pics please....
- Location
- Veurne, Belgium
I am satisfied with the manual steering, I don't need the autosteer function for the moment.
Just a quick update. I want to do a proper one once I'm happy with the whole setup - not yet! System arrived in many boxes with an ECU manual and a couple of pamphlets covering individual setups but nothing showing the 'whole'. It's been a pain in the arse from the start, and every step has required lengthy conversations with the ever polite Ukrainians on WhatsApp. But finally I do have an autosteer tractor working and a pretty stable base station running an Ntrip through a FieldBee server. Not done anything useful with it. I get the feeling I'm 6 months too early with the whole L2, RTK Autosteer purchase, given the beta testing I'm doing. But I'm still thinking I'm quids in with around £5k for a dual tractor setup and a bit over a grand for the base. Time will continue to tell. I paid a pal of mine £1k to help me, so I still have around £6k left before I'm trimble even...... and around 14 days left on my 30 day return it warranty!
What tractors are you using? Where/what were the biggest installation problems you experienced??
I see from the FB email newsletter, they have just launched a new hydraulic steering system. No prices shown.
Apologies. The Scottish term is Scubbie heided. Which translates to a bit busy. I have two 4 cylinder fendts, both have the same steering wheel, both don't fit the reaction bracket. Not a huge problem but a bit of drilling required. The biggest issue is no manual to cover the overall install. A big ecu manual, some pamphlets for the GPS units, and YouTube for the software but no overarching step 1..... After dealing with a dodgy server, the weird WiFi module and the fact that the recommended tablet did not have enough ram. It works. But the accuracy is not 20mm. Now I need to find a fixed mounting spot for the base with known coordinates. Then I need to understand the control system options to improve the PID aspect. Then I've got a chance. I've decided this weekend to try and fit it to my 22yr lexion 430. Might give me a chance to spend hours with it rather than every now and then. But the steering wheel on it has less clearance than a fendt!
Hydraulic steering using can bus would be easy with this setup, but I doubt a retrofit steering valve would be much fun. Depends on the install manual.... Once I'm happy I have something like sub 100mm accuracy, I'll do a full debrief.
Hydraulic steering using can bus would be easy with this setup, but I doubt a retrofit steering valve would be much fun. Depends on the install manual.... Once I'm happy I have something like sub 100mm accuracy, I'll do a full debrief.
It does seem like a case of the idea and theory not quite matching reality of a DIY install.
With more installs, I guess that the experience will translate back to new users.
Ok Folks, we're winning now. Sorted virtually all the gremlins. LoRa working brilliantly from my house on the hill across the farm below. Perfect RTK everywhere. When under a tree it drops to FRTK but immediately recovers once the tractor rover can see the sky again. I would upload a video of drilling wheat yesterday but not sure how to get an mp4 file uploaded. The Ukrainians even sent me a 106 page manual yesterday to use the navigator app. Only took two months! What's making me really smug is I paid around £5k for the tractor hardware and it's the same stuff as agleader fit. I have the same ECU and MDU (steering motor) with the ECU being the same as they fit on brand spanking steer ready tractors. Had to send back the first recommended £150 samsung tablet as it ran out of RAM. The £300 replacement however was fantastic as it allows a complete wireless tractor setup with LoRa. It uses a hotspot to connect with the receiver and simultaneously uses wifi to connect to the ECU. This was a nightmare at the beginning but now you can remove the tablet from the tractor and bring it back the next day where it automatically connects. They didn't have LoRa switched on initially so was using NTRIP (they provide the server but there were delays in retrieving RTK). Which works ok but mobile reception here is rubbish and the Anywhere Sim I bought chewed through data at £10/day. There would probably be a solution for that but I'd rather have the LoRa when my farm is only 2km radius from the base. Also it needs a wifi router in the cab which was another complexity that most systems build into their head units to tidy that problem away. Only thing I found that's a bother is that the 3m mounted drill on the back of the fendt needs the front press to keep the nose down so trying to get accuracy and speed with the press in the ground doesn't work very well. A quick search in the forum shows this a common fault in pukka setups with a proposed solution being a wheel angle sensor. Not sure if I need an ECU unlock code to get this activated for an MDU setup. But hoping that a WAS will solve the problem. Certainly the wiring loom has a plug for the sensor as I suspect its an Ag Leader part too. All in all an absolute pain communicating with them but ultimately success and now happy to expand it into other machines.
Excellent news and good work @scotston
We are looking forward to the OPen Day, as the only declared user of the FB software and hardware in the UK.
Interesting that the Tablet needed changing as the app/hardware were power hogs. But 300 quid is peanuts compared to pukka displays for such systems.
I wonder why it was using so much data though. There is a thread somewhere here with some calcs and feedback from Users, and it was a fraction of what you were using. Unless you were paying £10/500kb!!!
We are looking forward to the OPen Day, as the only declared user of the FB software and hardware in the UK.
Interesting that the Tablet needed changing as the app/hardware were power hogs. But 300 quid is peanuts compared to pukka displays for such systems.
I wonder why it was using so much data though. There is a thread somewhere here with some calcs and feedback from Users, and it was a fraction of what you were using. Unless you were paying £10/500kb!!!
Hi, You can upload any videos you like to YouTube then share their links. You just have to login to YouTube with a google account which is easy just make a YouTube only gmail email address to do that stuff with.
I am looking at their system, I,liked the sub free accuracy option of the base station.
Does that offset their expensive steering wheel choice?
Did you say that the local area radio is not working for you as I was hoping it would be?
What was your In cab WiFi router solution? Or was this only for, you go outside the base stations radio range?
Thanks for any help.
I'm delighted they have an off the shelf steering wheel as it's one less thing for them to develop. I'm not sure how hardware focussed they are so better they stick to worrying about getting the base and nav software to integrate with the wheel than trying to save cash on development. Ntrip from the usual boys was gonna cost between £600 and £800 per year. A base at £1200 odds will pay back the whole system in no time more than off setting the wheel. Initially they didn't have loRa working but now it works fine, very quick to pick and RTK everywhere on my place. I put the base at my house and went for a drive in the pickup to check. Only faltered under sheds and trees.
Hi I have a question can the FieldBee base station talk to Trimble receivers and kit?
I asked fieldbee they said.
Quote View attachment FieldBee-L2-RTK-GNSS-Base-station-Datasheet.pdfView attachment FieldBee-L2-RTK-GNSS-Base-station-Datasheet.pdfFieldBee RTK base station (1599 EUR) and have centimeter accuracy. You can check the data sheet of our base station, if your system can receive NMEA0183 signal in RTCMx3 format (baudrate is 115200 kb/s) via Internet or radio, you should be able to use it with other receivers.
I include their data sheet.
so can you test this, has any of your farming friends got Trimble based gps RTK, and can they log into your base station.
I do this because I think we can break a monopoly if it’s true, where they can charge annual sub for something we can get for free once we have a base station of our own, fully setup.
thanks
I ask this here because they are reluctant to tell me as you might imagine they say it’s doubtful etc which is not, a no it will not, so my guess is it will and they don’t want to say it will.
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