Agroguía manual guidance system

Easy, clear and accurate. These are the thee words to begin this post which are the main features to define the GPS manual guidance system that will be the aim of this post.

The Agroguía company has sent us one of their products in order to allow us to test it without any restrictions or conditions... the first experience has been really positive. Some weeks ago, we received this product in our house, but due to the weather condition last week was the first time we could go to the field with the spra​yer to perform some tests and work with it. As you can see in the ​pìctures, this system is composed of:

• Google Nexus​7​ Tablet of ​7-inch screen.
• Navilock GPS receiver with optimized firmware.
• Metal bracket to anchor the GPS receiver on top of the tractor cab.
• ​Black vacuum pump suction cup base to put tablet where the driver can watch it while you are driving.
• Bluetooth module to connect tablet and GPS receiver.
• Wiring to supply power for tablet and GPS receiver.
• User manual.​

We would like to mention the three main features, as we have been said before:
Easy: this system can be installed in the tractor with only 10​ ​minutes. This task consists on put the antenna on the tractor cab and connect the electrical components. 

Clear: once the Agroguía application is executed, the farmer only has to indicate the working width and press START button... the rest of tasks are performed automatically.

And Accurate: in spite of the EGNOS free signal, the system offers a really good accuracy  for fertilizing and spraying. During the tests, we used our ​foam marker while the Adroguía system was working​ and the result was perfect.

We would like to highlight the user interface, which is really attractive and whose design shows the information fast and clear. You can get information about the worked ​hectares, the working speed, the distance between two points, shapes, etc... really quickly.

Finally, we are going to mention the disappointed feature, for us, one characteristic can be improved. This feature is the way of indicating the deviation in our work. The deviation is indicated with a small blue arrow which goes moving in order to correct our position... in our opinion this arrows should be bigger and in different colors according to our deviation value, in this way the deviation correction could be better and accurate.

You can see two videos about this system from here: video1 and video2.

Versión en español.
 

Joaquín Herminio Tribaldos (Twins' Farm)