NE South Dakota Clark, SD | KDD - 2/8/2024 10:10
So, Paul, I think you are a dealer for non-deere gps equipment, right? I assume probably AgLeader? Or Trimble?
And so I know you must think Deere AMS is somehow inferior.
Some here seem to think Deere stuff is hard to use. I think it has a learning curve, as all technology does, but I find it very easy once I learn it.
I also think Deere has the most advanced functionality across many tasks, and is the most advanced in seamless data handling.
You ask if the OP here wants "the best", or "just the best that Deere offers".
So educate me: Is this just a junior-high color war, or can you tell me what, specifically, makes your brands technically superior to Deere, feature-for-feature? Or what does brand X have that Deere does not?
And to the OP: Maybe your dealer has plans to shut down there own rtk tower system, but I know of no trend in the industry to go away from rtk.
I am color blind as far as equipment and GPS, I have my preferred individual items from different brands that have proven themselves in what I do. I am not trying to sell the OP anything. I only sell GPS for grade control. I don't sell Ag Leader or Trimble or any GPS for steering or Variable Rate. There are numerous GPS brands that have better accuracy than JD. 75% of my grade control customers use JD RTK to feed positioning into my controls. I started working with this 14 years ago when all my JD customers had ITC receivers, It was good enough, but there were better receivers available that also used GLONASS. Then the 3000 came out and got close to catching up, but were still several years behind in the vertical accuracy department, which is what my main concern is. The 6000 was a minimal improvement for vertical accuracy, but did have quicker acquisition times and better fallback, but that means nothing to me as I need RTK fix for accurate grade control. We have been using multiple constellation GPS receivers for several years and now JD finally released one, so they are improving, but again several years behind the "best". Is JD GPS good enough or the best? He asked about the best and I asked for a clarification.
As far as monitors, I feel JD went backwards with the Gen 4 vs Gen 3 as far as variable rate is concerned. With Gen 2 and 3 we used to be able to send out 3 meter resolution variable rate GRX files with multiple products in a single file. Gen 4 no longer accepts GRX files or multiple product shapefiles, so we have to send out a separate shapefile for each product and have limitations on polygon count. This is not a big deal if your fields are 160 acres or less. In my part of the world and further west 300 to 1200 acre fields are not uncommon. I have several growers that have multiple 2000 acre and larger fields, not farms, but fields planted to a single crop and managed as 1 field. Probably not very common in Ohio. For me to export an RX map that will load in a Gen 4, I have to dumb it down to 30 meter resolution. They run 60-80 foot equipment, so the map cells are larger than the equipment. So there is a win for the older JD AMS. I have other users east of me that a big field is 60 acres. These limitations don't affect them. The OP has no location, so we know nothing to help direct them.
I own APEX for 1 reason. So I can load background image maps into Gen 2 and 3 JD monitors. I do this with tile plans and surface drainage maps for customers. Gen 4 and I am assuming at this point that Gen 5 monitors no longer accept background maps and Ops Center will not create them, so there is a win for APEX and pre Gen 4 monitors.
If a client of mine was just getting into variable rate and precision ag in general and they had all modern JD equipment, I would strongly suggest going with JD AMS for convenience. It is miles ahead of the other main competitor when it comes to VR. If someone was a mixed fleet, i would probably push them towards Ag Leader. I am not much of a fan of Trimble for VR. They were the best at steering, but the others have caught up in the last 15 years or so.
So hopefully I answered your questions. I will end it with a comment I was told years ago about JD AMS to lighten the mood. "You may find better, but you will never pay more." |
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