Hmmm, maybe I should charge more then a case of beer to assemble lol. Any idea who is selling it?

 

James, lol. No idea.

 

It's me. Built a kit for another tractor so put it on kijiji to see if there's interest.
Hmmm....Looking at the website of the guy who sells toughbooks on kijiji and I am pretty sure I know who it is on this forum.
Beerwiser if your building kits for him I hope you charge at least two 24 packs of beer lol.

 

I'm not sure selling is a good idea. In fact, it may be a really bad idea. Most of the concepts and ideas are patented - non of which are licensed, also there is a liability in selling auto anything. Also of course the "About" in AgOpenGPS expressly forbids use on an actual piece of equipment used in the real world. A Quick chat with a lawyer who understands this stuff would be wise to inform you of your liabilities.

Too cautious, well maybe. But probably not.


BTW, nice job on cables and setup!

 

I'd say $1000 is a fair price for the work you put into it. I don't mind paying money for technology, even large amounts of money. What I don't like is the proprietary nature and secrecy surrounding the commercial systems, or how a company can leave you high and dry with no knowledge of how to fix things when they break.

If the fear of patents or other forms of litigation stopped anyone from selling something they've made, we wouldn't have a green book full of things farmers in Saskachewan have made in their shops over winter.

What stops me from wanting to make and sell things is the customer support issue!

 

If you want to sell just the angle sensor mount and cabling, I would be interested. I find putting together all the little pieces to be the biggest pain, maybe that why it's called DIY. Oh, and a mounting system for attaching the steering motor to the tractor. I'm thinking about going the direction of building something that is compatible with the EZ-Steer motor mounting bracket, since these are pretty common. I realize that creating a custom mount is not that hard, but tying into a standard that already exists would make it even easier.

 

Sorry but since that is the only angle sensor I have and the wiring is soldered right into the connector I dont want to cannibilize it.
The sensor is the standard gm suspension sensor. Mount came with it. And for the wiring look up shielded 4 wire twisted two pair.

I do not know how a common steer motor mount could even be made. The 3 tractors in our shop right now would all require mounts that are vastly different in design.

I'll take photos of the steer motor mount I made in our 8770 tomorrow and post them in the wiki.

 

Angle sensor and steering motor mounting are the hardest part of the installation. And of course a universal kit would be nearly impossible.

 

Nice work on the wiring, I seen it on Kijiji today. I am in the process of building one right now. I do have a question about what GPS you guys are using for a RTK setup?

 

Going forward, it looks like the ZED-F9P modules are the way to go. They work with multiple frequency bands simultaneously, so they can get an RTK fix much quicker than the older L1-only units like the Emlid Reach RS+. Also they do the RTK processing onboard, so all you need is to feed RTCM to one of the module's UARTs, and get serial NMEA out, either over USB or UART.

I bought some units (without antennas or radios) from SparkFun for about $220 USD a piece. Antennas can be purchased from Digikey (Sparkfun doesn't have any L2 antennas yet). Alternatively you can by the SimpleRTK2 modules from Ardusimple out of Europe. Either way you'd need a radio link between the modules. Ardusimple offers some units that work with their modules for shorter ranges (a couple of km). I'm planning to use Digi XTC radios (these are SX or SX Pro radios with the hopping firmware installed) with a 1 watt transmitter on my shop which should reach at least 5 miles. Right now they aren't quite as slick to set up as Emlid's Reach RS+ GPS units. You'll have to use U-Blox's U-Center application to set parameters. But I imagine when Emlid starts using the F9P for their GPS receivers, that will be slick!