[jvw]

I would like to thank Agtron service, I have had to call a few times, even after hours, and they have been excellent, knowledgable, and diagnosed my troubles over the phone no problem. The system, when functioning and set correctly is amazing. I have two loops, all run on the seed, and one per tower on the fert. Even with only 1 per tower, it is enough to find a plugged secondary or any other issue.

But the reliability of the sensors makes the rest of the system nearly useless. I replaced 6 last year, then had six more fail before the end, and replaced them this year, by the time I started out I had a few more, and after only a couple hundred acres I've lost 14 sensors already this year. Any time there is a sensor failed( which is nearly always right now), it won't let you calibrate, which makes the info not much use. And it becomes like the boy who cried wolf, where I can't believe what it says, some fail with an error, most with a clean sensor, and some with a blocked message.

Is there something I could be doing wrong to be going through so many sensors? Do they die from use( solid state electronics, seems unlikely?) vibration? Tension on wires pulling? Weather( sun, rain, temperature swings) from sitting outside in the off season? Welding on the machine? I don't know the age of some of these sensors, as they came with the drill, but it appears lots have been changed before, different ages and degree of fading.

Can the sensors be refurbished? I've tried cleaning, and rotating. Will the new sensors be any more reliable?

 

[lanwickum]

I have never used or worked on those systems. Been reading were they had a run of bad sensors. Seems like the should have replaced every sensor made in that time period. An Agtron rep is on here fairly often. See if you can contact him. Seems like a good guy and a company that tries hard from what I read on here. If that doesn't work. Intelligent Ag Solutions. That system works almost flawlessly.

 

[joesixpack]

Not much help but for perspective we have only changed 4 optical sensors on the all run flexicoil monitor from 2006.

 

[primer]

Are you sure the sensors are failing? I had one fail this year, and thought I had 5 more failing because they would constantly turn on and off(you can see that on the tablet version). Right before removing them, I cleaned the blue connectors with WD-40 and reconnected. This fixed all but that first bad sensor.

Even though you're getting good connection, sometimes something weird happens in the cables.

 

[wheatking]

I would like to thank Agtron service, I have had to call a few times, even after hours, and they have been excellent, knowledgable, and diagnosed my troubles over the phone no problem. The system, when functioning and set correctly is amazing. I have two loops, all run on the seed, and one per tower on the fert. Even with only 1 per tower, it is enough to find a plugged secondary or any other issue.

But the reliability of the sensors makes the rest of the system nearly useless. I replaced 6 last year, then had six more fail before the end, and replaced them this year, by the time I started out I had a few more, and after only a couple hundred acres I've lost 14 sensors already this year. Any time there is a sensor failed( which is nearly always right now), it won't let you calibrate, which makes the info not much use. And it becomes like the boy who cried wolf, where I can't believe what it says, some fail with an error, most with a clean sensor, and some with a blocked message.

Is there something I could be doing wrong to be going through so many sensors? Do they die from use( solid state electronics, seems unlikely?) vibration? Tension on wires pulling? Weather( sun, rain, temperature swings) from sitting outside in the off season? Welding on the machine? I don't know the age of some of these sensors, as they came with the drill, but it appears lots have been changed before, different ages and degree of fading.

Can the sensors be refurbished? I've tried cleaning, and rotating. Will the new sensors be any more reliable?

I bought mine in 2011 or 2012, and they where good until this year. I have just given up replacing sensors. It seems there is 4-5 at a time and I have just said f it. I'm not stopping and just turned the system off. I have the ISO system running on a JD 2630.

Would be nice if they had a tool you could hook the sensor up too, to see if its bad, instead of climbing in and out of the cab, etc...

 

[wheatking]

I should add I have had good luck on with their phone support as well. Would be nice if they had a replacement or trade in program on the bad sensors.

 

[woodytr99]

This is my third season with mine. Up till this year all was good. I had an issue with a sensor and replaced it, had a couple other problems and there support people were really helpful. Mine is still under warranty

 

[jvw]

Woodytr99, I haven't had a chance to verify that each of these has failed, but any that I tried switching places/loops with, the problem stayed with the sensors.

 

[woodytr99]

Woodytr99, I haven't had a chance to verify that each of these has failed, but any that I tried switching places/loops with, the problem stayed with the sensors.

Sounds to me like the sensor is hooped

 

[Ozzie]

Sounds to me like the sensor is hooped

What in the world does "hooped" mean. I've got a bloody great pile of agtron sensors that are f#@*ed but not sure if they are hooped?

 

[woodytr99]

What in the world does "hooped" mean. I've got a bloody great pile of agtron sensors that are f#@*ed but not sure if they are hooped?

Lol hooped =fuc#&d.

 

[bad altitude]

Are you sure they're hooped and just not looped? Ha ha. We're running the new Legend system and this year it's seems to be working flawlessly. But I'll reserve final judgement till after the crop starts coming up.

 

[primer]

Are you sure they're hooped and just not looped? Ha ha. We're running the new Legend system and this year it's seems to be working flawlessly. But I'll reserve final judgement till after the crop starts coming up.

I've had my legend give false blockages(which was fixed by unplugging everything, then plugging it back in) but never give me a false positive.

 

[Don Boles]

What in the world does "hooped" mean. I've got a bloody great pile of agtron sensors that are f#@*ed but not sure if they are hooped?

Junk.
It's when Australians have "dramas" with things.

 

[AgtronSupport]

We did have a bad batch of sensors from around 2011/2012. jvw if you could get me a couple of serial numbers from your sensors I could tell if they fell into that group of bad sensors. We have since released an new sensor to replace those ones. They are easy to notice as the serial number label is now blue. (The old ones were white serial number labels). These problems that we noticed in years past have dropped considerably with the new sensors. You can email me those serial numbers to [email protected]

 

[jvw]

Agtron Support, thank you for replying, I will get you some SN's. Do you have any comments on what else could be causing failure, and if any of those causes are preventable on my part?

 

[Ozzie]

We did have a bad batch of sensors from around 2011/2012. jvw if you could get me a couple of serial numbers from your sensors I could tell if they fell into that group of bad sensors. We have since released an new sensor to replace those ones. They are easy to notice as the serial number label is now blue. (The old ones were white serial number labels). These problems that we noticed in years past have dropped considerably with the new sensors. You can email me those serial numbers to [email protected]

Agtron support, I have posted numerous times about my problems with zero response from Agtron. I invested an enormous amount of $ in those "2012 bad batch" sensors yet I get no response from Agtron.:11:
What gives ?

 

[w-mFarms]

we have had our agtron blockage system since 2008, that system saved my ass several times, once I ignored it and it showed.
anyway never had a bad sensor, only have it sometimes it says to reboot system so i shut off fire back up and good to go, I really love our agtron system and can't imagine seeding without it.

 

[detroit s60]

I have come to rely on the agtron system usually if it's beeping there's a problem somewhere sometimes hard to pinpoint if it's the airdrill or a sensor but if ignored usually it's the airdrill. I wish there was a quick diagnostic tool to check sensors I swapped out 4 sensors this year chasing the faulty one it kept giving err. Codes except it was the wrong sensor number that gave the code. It's saved me from having a strip farm a few times and when I ignored it it made me the fool once with fertilizer. I feel that if I had a sensor on every run it would likely drive me bonkers one on each primary and check individual runs every tank fill is my standard.
I put a new blue sn sensor on and it was faulty right away but they repaced it right away. I think it's a three year warranty on the sensors. Agtron has been pretty good about the warranty on the sensors I've had trouble with.

 

[Vic Farmer]

I was caught out with a connector after the sensor on one head, causing a fault for the next sensor 10 feet away
obviously it knew that say sensor 6 and 8 had signal but 7 did not , took a few changes in sensors and checking of seed flow to figure it out

Anyone using the legend , was it worth the change ? i am interested but hate loosing the extra inputs , currently using 2 bin and shaft , fan work and gnd speed,
could probably get by with 1 shaft taken at drive rater than meters and use gps speed