An easy button for data and technology

The ‘easy’ button was a marketing campaign made popular by Staples office supplies in 2005. The idea was that doing business is as simple as pushing a button. Ease of use is the idea behind changes to the newest Case IH line of equipment and technology. “When a farmer gets in the new equipment, it will seem familiar, easy to use, and have seamless data transfer capabilities,” according to Arik Witker, Regional Product Support & Precision Farming Manager with Redline Equipment.

Ease of use and compatibility with other product lines has been a major focus of agriculture equipment in recent years. In the past, each equipment line and technology company spoke its own language, and often times, one piece of equipment may have difficulty ‘talking’ to equipment from another company. 

That is changing, as evidence by the AEF Spring Plug Fest. The 2019 AEF Spring Plugfest was held in Lincoln, Nebraska and takes place every spring and fall, alternately in the U.S. and Europe. They provide the industry with the opportunity to test their own ISOBUS product developments in combination with those from other manufacturers using the test protocol defined in the ISO 11783 standards. “Basically, it’s a chance for each company to see if their equipment will talk with everyone else’s,” said Witker. “Case IH has been working on making it easier to bring all the data out of the red machines and take it to the various platforms the farmer chooses to utilize for analysis.”

The new AFS Connect™ Magnum series tractors from Case IH, have the data capabilities built in. “The modem, is already there from the factory,” said Witker. AFS Connect™ which stands for Advanced Farming Systems (AFS) Connect allows a farmer to remotely monitor and manage the farm, fleet and data. The goal is to enable the farmer to optimize overall performance, productivity and flexibility. AFS Connect™ provides real-time dashboard access to the equipment on any device. Farmers have instant access to location, diagnostics, fuel and engine stats, just like they would see it in the field. “The AFS Connect™ platform has two primary components,” Witker said. “Everything is built-in from the factory. The telematics component allows a farmer to send agronomic information to their office computer, or agronomy service provider; and then there is the diagnostics component which allows for the real-time trouble shooting.”

Looking back at the Case IH evolution of displays, it started with the Universal Display, which was followed by the Universal Display Plus, then the Pro 600 and Pro 700 models. “Components would be moved from vehicle to vehicle. A farmer could move the GPS and display from one tractor to another, or to the sprayer or combine. The next generation is the Pro 1200 display which is part of the AFS Connect™ Platform and is fully integrated. It will be out this year on the new 2020 AFS Connect™ Magnum. This fundamentally changes the communication within the tractor. It is all new in terms of the wiring and technology capabilities built in,” said Witker. “It is all geared around user friendliness and user support.” The Pro 1200 will have a very similar lay-out to the Pro 700, however it has been redesigned to be more user friendly. A farmer will never be more than 3-4 clicks deep into a menu to get to anything they need to see. The user also has the ability to do almost any function, in more than one way, to fit the way they like to operate the tractor. There are still tactile buttons to push, or they can use buttons on the touchscreen monitor, or the AFS ISO Task Controller.

Witker says that transitioning from a Pro 700 to the new Pro 1200 should be a relatively quick learn for farmers or new users. “Generally, farmers have the concepts down as to what needs to happen, and they understand what it takes, they just need to learn the button presses to make it happen,” Witker said.

Since its reveal of the autonomous concept vehicle in 2016, Case IH has continued evolving the technology and further defining automation and autonomy for agriculture. “The autonomous vehicle we have in Racine, Wisconsin is real. The technology is there. It just has a little ways to go yet. It has made leaps and bounds, and the technology is there, it is just a matter of further refining it. If you look at where auto steer was 15 years ago, and where it is today, we have seen tremendous refinements making it better. It will be the same with this vehicle,” said Witker. “We already have AFS Soil Command, which makes tillage tools work smarter. It takes a simple tillage tool and adds sensors to the tines and shanks that plug into an ISO platform and it senses vibration and drag, then feeds into the autonomy telling the tractor to slow down, or to raise the implement or lower it as needed.”

“Farmers are like the mainstream consumer. They have a desire for more information and a need for knowledge. We now have all this data at our disposal, but in the end, it is like a treadmill. It is only good if you use it. Now technology allows us to simply push one button on the display in the cab and everything is there, maps, averages, and much more. Just ten years ago we would have to take out a PC card and hope that it had the GPS data points on it, and then download it to a program on a computer to process it to make a map, then re-upload the information and take it back to another display and controller. Today it is as easy as the push of a button,” said Witker. “We are essentially an easy button push for data and technology.”

For more information on Precision Farming click here