Agroguía manual guidance system

Easy, clear and accurate. These are the thee words to begin this post which are the main features to define the GPS manual guidance system that will be the aim of this post.

The Agroguía company has sent us one of their products in order to allow us to test it without any restrictions or conditions... the first experience has been really positive. Some weeks ago, we received this product in our house, but due to the weather condition last week was the first time we could go to the field with the spra​yer to perform some tests and work with it. As you can see in the ​pìctures, this system is composed of:

• Google Nexus​7​ Tablet of ​7-inch screen.
• Navilock GPS receiver with optimized firmware.
• Metal bracket to anchor the GPS receiver on top of the tractor cab.
• ​Black vacuum pump suction cup base to put tablet where the driver can watch it while you are driving.
• Bluetooth module to connect tablet and GPS receiver.
• Wiring to supply power for tablet and GPS receiver.
• User manual.​

We would like to mention the three main features, as we have been said before:
Easy: this system can be installed in the tractor with only 10​ ​minutes. This task consists on put the antenna on the tractor cab and connect the electrical components. 

Clear: once the Agroguía application is executed, the farmer only has to indicate the working width and press START button... the rest of tasks are performed automatically.

And Accurate: in spite of the EGNOS free signal, the system offers a really good accuracy  for fertilizing and spraying. During the tests, we used our ​foam marker while the Adroguía system was working​ and the result was perfect.

We would like to highlight the user interface, which is really attractive and whose design shows the information fast and clear. You can get information about the worked ​hectares, the working speed, the distance between two points, shapes, etc... really quickly.

Finally, we are going to mention the disappointed feature, for us, one characteristic can be improved. This feature is the way of indicating the deviation in our work. The deviation is indicated with a small blue arrow which goes moving in order to correct our position... in our opinion this arrows should be bigger and in different colors according to our deviation value, in this way the deviation correction could be better and accurate.

You can see two videos about this system from here: video1 and video2.

Versión en español.
 

Joaquín Herminio Tribaldos (Twins' Farm)

Pruning olive trees: “Without too much wood, the olives will be better and more”

After harvesting olives and once the spring is coming, our olive trees need to be pruned. During these days and with the beginning of warm weather, we have started to prone our olive trees. According to a Spanish proverb: "Without too much wood, the olives will be better and more", this job is very important in this crop. We don't carry out this work every year, so in this occasion we are doing an intensive pruning as you can see in our pictures, even you can see the state of some olive trees before and after pruning. Our father is teaching us... initially, it is very difficult. We try our olives not to be too high and its treetop to be opened in the middle.

As in almost all farming jobs, the tools are fundamental and in our opinion, we have good pruning tools... we recommend them for you. In this manner, the pruning tasks are carried out quickly and comfortable. This pruning team consists on two pneumatic scissors of Italian brand called Paterlini (the big scissors for gross brands and the other scissors for thin brands), an Abac air compressor of 3HP and a generator that supplies electric energy to air compressor. The working pressure is about 8bar. These scissors don't need a big airflow so our generator doesn't work very often but it has to be on always while we are pruning.

At the end of our pruning day, we picked up brands and they were burned to keep our field cleaned. After this job, we are going to spray our olive trees, but it will be subjects for new future posts.

Versión en español.

Joaquín Herminio Tribaldos (Twins' Farm)