Fairfield County, Ohio, USA | Yep, I've certainly put thought into this. I suppose one might say that I'm a "measure three times, cut once" kind of guy. I grew up on the farm, but technology has always been my passion (and day job). Being able to put together technology and agriculture is a new level of fun, for me. Our farms have always had rather old equipment, at least until very recently, and our tractors are still old (4440, 4230, and a number of smaller ones). Being able to retrofit InCommand and SteadySteer onto these tractors is awesome. I wish my grandparents were still around to see it; they'd have been fascinated.
My dad and brother are the primary farmers, depending which land we're talking about. My brother picks up on technology pretty quickly; I just have to figure it out and then show him how it works once or twice. My dad on the other hand, is not nearly as willing to change. My brother bought a Compass with GPS 6000 (WAAS) a few years ago, and my dad absolutely hates it. The GPS seems to take forever to acquire, and then is exceedingly easy to lose while driving near trees. It's indeed very annoying, but he outright refuses to use it. Then we bought an InCommand 1200 with GPS 7500 (WAAS... or maybe TerraStar L?) and Steady Steer a year ago (I think it was last year?) and he's used it when we've pushed him to. It seems to acquire GPS much, much faster, and seems to keep it much better than the Compass setup does. But he *hates* that he has to tap the screen to start/stop painting on the InCommnad. All we've done is guidance/steering so far... no "real" implement logging.
My brother and I had been misled by two different dealers about the abilities of the Compass and InCommand. Had I known that the Application Rate Module and lift switches were a thing, I'd have equipped everything we own with a lift switch years ago. Tapping that damn button on the screen is such a trivial thing in one respect, but it changes the workflow enough, and has significant enough ramifications, that using lift switches seems downright obvious. Now that I'm aware of that, and I've found some documentation on portal.agleader.com, I plan to push harder to start logging more things.
Regarding your comments about backup/restore -- I'm pretty sure I understand. :) My intent was to set up implements for everything we own on one InCommand, back it up, and then restore it to the other InCommand. I would, of course, be very careful not to lose any data while doing this. I've yet to use SMS or AgFinity, but I plan to subscribe to AgFinity and DisplayCast so that I can remotely help my dad/brother if they need it while I'm at my day job, and want to get SMS (Basic, probably?) so that I can keep all of the data centrally. And then figure out what all I can do with that data. :')
Does anyone offhand know which Ag Leader part numbers I should use to connect the Application Rate Module to the InCommand 1200's display harness? I've ordered a used App Rate Mod from someone here, so don't have instructions or line art or etc to get P/Ns from. (I'm pretty sure that the Y-splitter I'll need is 4000137, but I don't know the P/N for a CAN cable that would work for this. )
Thanks again for your advice. |
Ag Leader InCommand 1200 and Deere 1560 Drill
