Tractor and harvester machinery giant Claas reckons different brands of precision farming equipment should work together. As such, it has recently announced further steps to bring this aim closer to reality
Nothing in farming moves faster than electronics — apart maybe from a bullock with its head up and a taste for freedom. Machinery makers have to innovate or get left in the dust, and those involved with precision farming — yield mapping, machine guidance, telemetry, data analysis, input targeting — have to move faster than most. All face a basic choice: work in a closed system, into which only electronics with the company badge are allowed; or go for an open system, where equipment and software from the outside world co-operate with the company’s own products. Claas took the open approach. Central to such pragmatism is its EASY (Efficient Agriculture Systems) framework, and to keep up the pace Claas has recently introduced or updated several key components.
isay: make dumb implements smarter
iBeacons are small devices, readily available on the Internet for upwards of £15 a pop. All an iBeacon does is wave a flag that says ‘Here I am, and my unique number is…’ using low-energy Bluetooth wireless to do the waving. Given the right app, that message can be picked up by any listening Android or iOS smartphone. Claas realised that iBeacons can, in effect, give a voice to dumb implements like rolls, rakes and subsoilers, so their use can be logged automatically in precision farming operations.
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