|
| My background is I am a 36 year old. I work off the farm as a heavy equipment mechanic. I went to school for diesel mechanics, I have some electrical training in diagnostics and how various sensors and components work. I do not have any electronics training or previous experience with electronics. My computer skills are probably average to slightly less than average for a guy my age.
The good news is AgopenGps is getting refined enough that you need very little electronics knowledge. To get to the point I am at I have not had to write or modify any code. I just followed instructions.
https://github.com/farmerbriantee/AgOpenGPS?tab=readme-ov-file
Above is the link to the main agopengps repository on GitHub.
https://github.com/AgOpenGPS-Official/Boards/wiki
This link above is very helpful, it has descriptions of each component, what it does and how to use it.
I ordered an AIO v4.2 pcb (AIO stands for All In One board. This board holds and controls all the steering components) from the instructions on the website. I then put on the BNO085 roll sensor(measures roll and sends it to the Teensy for processing), the Cytron motor driver (drives the steering control mechanism, either a wheel motor or a hydraulic valve) a Teensy v4.1 micro controller (controls all the board components and communicates with the tablet) and an Ardusimple RTK2B board (the RTK2B board has GPS chip that calculate the RTK position)
The configuration files for the teensy and the RTK2B board are on GitHub, so no programming is required to build an autosteer system.
I then added an ad on rate and section control module to the tractor. That is an ad on another user developed. Similar to the steering board, I ordered a printed circuit board and assembled it. He had the file for the arduino nano that controls it already written. I use it on a 3 point hitch sprayer and it works similar to any other rate controller. It receives a flow reading from a microtrak flow meter and operates a microtrak servo to control the sprayer.
The rate controller also has an option to drive an electric pump via a pwm signal. I bought a large 24v electric motor to drive the seed meter drive shaft on the planter. There is now a variable rate capability attached to to the rate control module. Once assembled I should be able to drive the planter via the electric motor following the VR map for variable rate seeding.
The last few weeks was my first attempt at my own Arduino coding. My other idea was to have a stepper motor driving each row unit. I needed a way to convert the pwm signal from the rate controller into a pps signal for the stepper motor drivers to read. A few bench tests looked promising, but when I tried to put together a working model on the bench it didn't work right. Now I am at a cross roads, do I spend more time trying to figure out the Arduino for individual stepper motor drive, or do I just throw the drive motor on the planter and call it a day and move on to other projects?
Very long post to say, I didn't come up with any original programming myself. I just put together building blocks of what others had developed. I am at about the same point you are. I am playing with the Adruino, trying to learn more about it for future projects.
The first picture is of the steering board for AgopenGps and the second picture is the rate control module I used.
Edited by WestMIguy 1/1/2025 09:00
 (IMG_5832 (full).png)
 (IMG_5833 (full).png)
Attachments
----------------
 IMG_5832 (full).png (238KB - 5 downloads)
IMG_5833 (full).png (158KB - 3 downloads)
| |
|
AgOpenGPS - Really cheap autosteer
