Cerea. What accuracy do you need for your work?

The evolution of Cerea self-guiding system has been constant since the brand was born. There are different options of GPS antennas that offer a large variety of alternatives to the farmer , where the farmer can choose the self-guided equipment that best suits their needs, With this objective, last 31st August Twins’ Farm organized a small demonstration in our village (La Alberca de Záncara - Cuenca) to show the different options that the self-guided Cerea implements at the moment in terms of accuracy. It should be noted that with greater working accuracy, the positioning error is smaller, ranging from 15cm to 2.5cm depending on the equipment used.

In order to make the right choice of the GPS antenna that the farmer needs in his self-guided system, it is very important to know the options offered by the self-guided system to be chose according the use you want. Depending on the tasks to be performed, the accuracy required may vary considerably and therefore the equipment required will be different. With this premise, Cerea offers different GPS receiver options so that the farmer can choose the most ideal option.

In the demonstration that we made, you can see a few pictures below, we focused on presenting the three options that Cerea currently offers:

• Novatel Ag-Star antenna.   
  • Single frequency GPS receiver.
  • Accuracy of 10-20 cm maximum error between passes (performed in less than 20 minutes).
  • It works in autonomous (only satellite coverage): DGPS.
  • It is an ideal option for all cereal jobs.
• Navilock GNSS active IP67 antenna and RTK Ardu Simple RTK2B ZED-F9P Module.
  • Dual-frequency GPS receiver.
  • Electronic board that performs calculations to work with RTK corrections.   
  • When telephony coverage is lost, it maintains accuracy for 1 minute. 
  • Maximum distance to the base station of 30-40 km.
  • Accuracy: 1cm error 65% of the time connected to a network of stations + 1 cm every 10 km distance to the base station.
  • It can't work in autonomous (requires satellite and telephone coverage): RTK.
• Hemisphere A222 antenna.
  • Dual Frequency GPS Receiver.
  • When telephony coverage is lost, it maintains accuracy for 10 minutes. 
  • Maximum distance to the base station of 50-60 km.
  • It works in autonomous (DGPS) and with telephone coverage (RTK).   
  • Accuracy in autonomous (DGPS) is 10-15 cm between passes performed in less than 10 minutes.
  • Accuracy in RTK is 0.8 cm + 0.5 cm for every 10 km distance to the base station.

The demonstrations in the field were conducted with two tractors both of them working with JJ Broch garlic sowing machines. The Hemisphere A222 antenna was installed on the Landini tractor and the RTK Ardu Simple RTK2B ZED-F9P module on the New Holland. The two tractors used a sowing of garlic as the demonstration was focused on the task of sowing garlic, which is the most important crop in our area that also requires certain accuracy. Garlic is a crop that is sown in rows at a distance of 45cm between rows. In addition, it is a crop that a few months after planting has to be harrowed, so that the closures between passes shall be appropriate distanced (if we have a narrower closure than normal we will have problems for the cultivator implement to work). Closures among passes are also important when harvesting with two-row or four-row machines (they work with rows of different passes at the same time). Apart from that, another similar crop could be maize or sunflower, although in these crops the distance between rows is greater and therefore the accuracy required is lower.

The farmers could see the tractors working with different configurations and the result was very rewarding because everyone was very happy seeing the good work done by the Cerea self-guiding system.

Versión en español.