As discussed in the previous thread, I've decided to pursue building an auto-steer system for ag use. Actually, it is two programs in one, a GPS logging system (to log what you're doing and where you're at), and then making the system steer a tractor.
The core of the system will be any Windows 2000 or XP based computer. This could be a laptop, tablet PC, or an actual mobile PC designed to run in a vehicle. I'm coding in Visual Basic 2008 Express Beta 2, so the application will require the .NET 2.0 Framework. I'll use SQL Server 2005 Express to store the data.
For external control (like running the steering control), I'm planning to use a card known as the "fusion brain". It is a USB based device, 10 analog inputs, 4 digital inputs, and 12 outputs, all sitting on a card about 3 inches square. It runs natively on 12V DC, and the outputs are capable of running relays. I think I can easily adapt this to the steering control. The device costs $50. More information about it can be found here: http://www.fusioncontrolcentre.com/Fusio....&products_id=28
Current status: The GPS Simulator is complete and generating NMEA codes just as a real antenna would. Speed and heading are adjustable. The NMEA codes are being processed, checksums are checked, codes are sorted based upon what commands are useful, and the data is being logged internally to a table which goes nowhere. I still need to make it talk to a real antenna, and I also have to make it display the data on a map.
I'm going to make this initial *non-functional* version available to the public to get some feedback. I tried to get the user interface as simple as possible, but if there is something I could improve, let me know. To make this run, you will need to have the .NET framework installed, at least version 2.0. If you don't have it, the application will tell you. It is available via Windows Update, or via the link below. Feedback Welcome
Joined: May 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 2,694 Location: Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Re: Lefebure GPS « Reply #2 on Oct 17, 2007, 9:14am »
Quote:
What will you be using for a display?
Any computer monitor you want. If you're using a laptop or tablet PC, those displays will work. If you're using a mobile PC, then you get to pick your own display. In that case, you could get a touch screen of whatever size you like.
The only requirement is that it has a resolution of at least 800x600, but larger than that and the program will make use of the extra screen space.
Joined: May 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 2,694 Location: Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Re: Lefebure GPS « Reply #4 on Oct 17, 2007, 10:59am »
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So the interface is going to be a touch screen (if one goes that route) OR a keyboard/mouse?
Correct. The application (like any other windows app) doesn't know if your using a touch screen or a mouse to "click" things on the screen. It doesn't really care. Thats a function of windows, the app just accepts that you clicked on something.
I really don't see much use for a keyboard, other than it would be easier to type field names and such compared to an on-screen keyboard, but whatever. It is an optional component.
Assume for a second that you don't have a touch screen. In that case, you need a mouse. In a moving vehicle, a typical mouse doesn't work good because of the flat surface needed to run it. In this application, I'd use a touchpad since it has no need to move. This is the same thing that most laptops have (that 2" square pad you use for the mouse).
Joined: May 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 2,694 Location: Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Re: Lefebure GPS « Reply #5 on Oct 17, 2007, 11:03am »
The large buttons and text are so it is easy to read in a vehicle while bouncing around. This also makes it easy to click the buttons with a touch screen, or click them with a mouse.
The black background is for visibility. High-contrast colors make it easier to read in bright conditions. Plus, the black background means less light at night. I'm used to the 9" screen in our 2388, and that has a white background with black text. At night, I see the reflection off the door and my peripheral vision keeps thinking it is a grain cart or something over there. A black background won't help all that much, but it's a step in the right direction I think.
Joined: Feb 2006 Gender: Male Posts: 461 Location: WC Saskatchewan
Re: Lefebure GPS « Reply #6 on Oct 17, 2007, 7:03pm »
I like it so far! But I'm a little confused. If you could do this in the past couple weeks in your spare time during the corn harvest, does this make you extremely intelligent or does that mean that the manufacturer's would have us think it's harder to do than it is?
How soon before I can input NMEA into it? I get the error message com 2 doesn't exist.
"My great-grandfather homesteaded this quarter in 1907 because he shot an antelope here. He figured that meant there was food available." I wish he would have homesteaded a quarter where he got mud on his boots instead...
Joined: May 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 2,694 Location: Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Re: Lefebure GPS « Reply #7 on Oct 17, 2007, 7:37pm »
Quote:
I like it so far! But I'm a little confused. If you could do this in the past couple weeks in your spare time during the corn harvest, does this make you extremely intelligent or does that mean that the manufacturer's would have us think it's harder to do than it is?
How soon before I can input NMEA into it? I get the error message com 2 doesn't exist.
Well getting live NMEA data into it won't do you much good as of right now, as there is no map, and no database to log it in. I don't have a real GPS receiver handy right now (I'll borrow one from a combine in a month), so I'm not concentrating on that right yet. I tried to make it do real serial stuff using an external GPS simulator app and a COM port loopback program, but alas, I gave up on that and just made my own simulator that should act more like a tractor would anyway. It doesn't turn instantly, and has appropriate and adjustable speed.
There is plenty of Serial to Visual Basic code out there, and I messed with it for a while. I found that it runs much better in a seperate thread from the rest of the app, as it waits for data. I was also having issues pulling lines of data, not just one character at a time. As I said, lots of code is out there to do this, so I'm not too concerned about it.
The latitude and longitude stuff is a little confusing, as there are several standards out there. Decimal degrees seemed the most logical, but the only formula I found to add a distance at a direction requires using radians. Then the NMEA format uses Degrees Minutes. So right now, the conversion goes something like this:
Decimal degrees -> Radians -> Add distance at a direction -> Back to Decimal degrees, To Degrees Minutes for NMEA, back to Decimal Degrees for logging it.
Yeah, I've been at this for just over 2 weeks now, starting from scratch, since I'd never used VB before. I'm now thinking about how to do the map (on a panel, or in a picturebox). That and the math for drawing a map of points is going to get a little intensive, especially if I try to redraw 10,000+ points on a map at 10 times per second. I haven't figured that one out yet, but gimme a week or two.
Re: Lefebure GPS « Reply #8 on Oct 17, 2007, 9:20pm »
lance make sure you can turn your screen red so if you are operating at night your eyes don't get screwed up When I lived on a boat in Alaska I had a navagation system on my computer and if you were running at night i=you could turn the screen to be red and you could see the water really well in fact on my radio's vhf ect... could be turned to red lights really nice for night time whish my Insight and stuff could do this you can turn down the brightness but that is it. oh arn't you gona try to do the turnes for you 180 turnes or just 90?? good luck
Joined: May 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 2,694 Location: Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Re: Lefebure GPS « Reply #9 on Oct 17, 2007, 10:40pm »
Montanna, its interesting you bring up the red thing. I believe it has been proven than red light is much easier to see at night than any other color. The gauges in a car are easier to see if they are red. Red and green are at different ends of the color spectrum, and at night our eyes seem to be able to adjust to/from red quicker than green.
I'm curious if the red theme in your boat was more important with water being around, like something to do with the moon reflecting off the water or something?
That said, it is just colors on a windows program. They can be set to anything. To change them "on the fly" is possible, but requires some code. I'll get to that later after I make the thing actually work.
The simulator turns in increments of 90 degrees. I think I can make the system steer a tractor in a U turn at the end of a pass, in which case it will do a 180 degree turn. The simulator and the Auto-U-Turn thing are two separate functions. Of course I need to be able to make it steer down an AB line first.
Re: Lefebure GPS « Reply #10 on Oct 18, 2007, 12:30pm »
lance what I was told with the red light was our eyes don't dielate (SP) so if you are trying to look out in the dark it is easy unlike going from the bright outside to the inside of a dark shed..and on alot of boats you only run with running lights but useally no big headlights unless you are on a big comercial fishing boat with big sodium lights
Joined: May 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 2,694 Location: Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Re: Lefebure GPS « Reply #11 on Oct 18, 2007, 10:02pm »
Quote:
How soon before I can input NMEA into it? I get the error message com 2 doesn't exist.
I’ve been working on the Serial port function, and having a lot of fun trying to get it to read in one line at a time, splitting lines at the line feed at the end. I’ve been testing with a GPS Receiver simulator program called GPSFeed+, then using a software loopback program so that COM2 and COM3 talk directly to eachother. I think most of my difficulty here was that the GPSFeed+ Program is crap. I don’t think it’s serial protocol is correct, but I definitely know it can’t calculate the NMEA GPRMC string correctly. It was saying the speed was 17,195 MPH at one point, and the checksum at the end isn’t being calculated correctly on about half of the RMC lines. Since I have the internal simulator functioning, maybe I’ll release that piece by itself since the world needs a GPS simulator capable of actually simulating GPS. *Sigh* Looking back, this sure would have been easier to hook up a real receiver.
Anyway, here is an updated release that should accept real NMEA info via Serial. Anyone with a real receiver (read: olblue) care to tell me if my code works or not? You still can’t do anything with the data, or even see it getting logged, but you can see the usable NMEA lines come in on the Info/GPS Code screen.
Joined: Feb 2006 Gender: Male Posts: 461 Location: WC Saskatchewan
Re: Lefebure GPS « Reply #12 on Oct 22, 2007, 6:51pm »
I hooked up a Trimble to it and set it to output NMEA strings at 4800, 8N1 using Com 1 (serial port on my Dell) and I got the following.
Did I miss something obvious? Not sure if I did something incorrect here or if there is a bug at your end. I didn't try 9600. Not sure if that would help or not.
"My great-grandfather homesteaded this quarter in 1907 because he shot an antelope here. He figured that meant there was food available." I wish he would have homesteaded a quarter where he got mud on his boots instead...
Joined: May 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 2,694 Location: Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Re: Lefebure GPS « Reply #14 on Oct 23, 2007, 5:15pm »
Olblue, based upon the error, I don't think the com port speed has anything to do with it. That looks specifically like a security message, like the PC is saying that application cannot use com ports. A quick google found that you might get that error if you are running the application from an untrusted location, such as a network share. Are you running it from your local hard drive?
Side note: I'm curious why you are seeing the title bar (the blue bar at the top). I thought I turned that off. It is supposed to go full screen and completely cover the start menu and everything. Thats why there is a minimize and close button on the black part of the screen.
Edit: I get the exact same error message when running the application from a network drive. Seems the program isn't trusted enough when running from a location that isn't a local drive.
"My great-grandfather homesteaded this quarter in 1907 because he shot an antelope here. He figured that meant there was food available." I wish he would have homesteaded a quarter where he got mud on his boots instead...
Version 2007.11.10 is released, still just for demonstration purposes. I've been working on the pattern section, and I added one for directions on how to get to the field, then the interface for the A-B line once you're there.
In my world, it isn't really an AB line, but rather an A point plus a heading. You can move the A point and use the same old heading, or you can adjust the heading. When storing one line for use later, only the heading will be stored. In that case, the next year, you'd come back out to that field, set a new A point, load the old heading, and off you go. If you need to tweak it any, there will be a nudge for the A point, and there will also be a nudge for the heading.
Joined: May 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 2,694 Location: Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Re: Lefebure GPS « Reply #17 on Nov 24, 2007, 9:47pm »
Greetings everyone. The GPS program has been progressing and I think I have the mapping working pretty well. I'm currently working on the Farmer/Field/Load names section. Right now the Farmer name is the only one you can edit. Can't even add or delete yet.
The map records all data to a table in memory, including little white dots for where you've been while logging is off. The data is only stored to the database when logging is on, so you'll sill have complete coverage maps when you reboot or whatever.
You will *NEED* to install SQL Server Compact Edition 3.5 Beta 2 before you can use this new version. A download link is provided in the Prerequisites section on my site. Don't worry, it isn't going to slow down your computer. It's only 2 megs in size.
Joined: May 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 2,694 Location: Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Re: Lefebure GPS « Reply #19 on Dec 13, 2007, 11:48pm »
Quote:
So how has it been going lately Lance?
I think I finally have the mapping done the way I want it to be. I did that over and over probably 5 different ways before I got a method that would work well after it has been running for a day or more. I'm logging data at one point per second, so after a few hours of running, it's a lot of stuff to map.
I also got the hardware integration working the other day. I can click buttons on the screen and relays will open and close accordingly.
I'm currently working on the A-B line pattern. For my purposes, that is the most important pattern type by far, so I intend to get that working before starting on other pattern types. I'm trying to decide how I want to overlay the A-B line on top of the map. I think I know how I want to make the tractor follow the line, but when jumping between passes, I'm not looking forward to that math. I think there is some nasty sine cosine stuff going on there.
I also located a computer that I think will be almost perfect for the task. 7" touch screen, 1 GB of RAM, and built in wireless. I'd like a bigger screen, but a 7" screen will be alright. http://tinyurl.com/2qwt2b
Joined: May 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 2,694 Location: Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Re: Lefebure GPS « Reply #21 on Dec 16, 2007, 8:33pm »
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Will it be ready for the spring of 08' or is it hard to put a date on this?
At a bare minimum, I'll be testing it and fixing bugs this spring while planting. Depends how many bugs I can find this winter while driving around in the snow or something. I won't be comfortable having other people use the system until I myself am confident it does what it should.
Since my last post, I rebuilt the hardware integration. It now allows me to use different types of switches, for example, a toggle switch to turn things on/off as well as a momentary push button that will toggle the setting when it is pushed. Maybe this is a bit confusing, but it gives me a lot of options for ways to turn logging and steering on and off.
Today I started in on the math to do AB lines, and thus far, it really isn't that bad. I don't exactly enjoy doing trigonometry, but...
Joined: May 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 2,694 Location: Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Re: Lefebure GPS « Reply #24 on Dec 17, 2007, 10:17am »
Quote:
...I'm wondering if yield mapping might be workable into this app in the future?
Yeah, it could be. I can easily extend the schema of the mapping table to support yield and moisture information. I could acquire that data via a serial port from a different yield monitor, or possibly even reading all the sensors directly. If you already have a yield monitor though, it may as well log that data on it's own.
Actually, a yield monitor was my initial idea, but that got changed into an auto-steer system because it will be of more use to us. Right now I'm inclined to keep the two separate.
I appreciate your offer for assistance, and I might take you up on that in a few months. The app has been written entirely in VB Express, and the database is SQL Compact.
Re: Lefebure GPS « Reply #25 on Dec 17, 2007, 2:43pm »
Sounds good! I already have enough computers around, so if I can use one, and some custom software + gps receiver to do the mapping/driving, that'll save a lot of $$$.
VB.NET and C#.Net are almost the same... just some syntax differences:
if(expr) { //code} else { }
if expr then end if I cut my teeth, so to speak, on Visual Basic 6.0 and then switched to C# because it's closer to C(and thus, php). Just a different dialect!
Still, if you want some help (or need testing!), let me know!
Joined: Jan 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 93 Location: Rumsey, AB
Re: Lefebure GPS « Reply #26 on Dec 18, 2007, 12:55am »
Hi Lance, Pretty interesting stuff you are working on, I like the computer but never done any programming. If I did learn how to program I would find myself up into the wee hours trying to finish just one last thing, sounds like you are persistent at it as well. My question for you is about the Gps simulator, I have seen simulators before but I want one that will drive back and forth over a preset piece of land(coordinates). What I am trying to do is fool my autorate controller on my air cart to think that the tractor is driving back and forth over one of my fields so I can check/calibarte my autorate in the shop and make sure it works to my liking before heading to the field. I was looking at making different prescription maps for a field and then have the simulator drive it back and forth at 5 mph and see if the controller was putting out what the map asked for. Would your simulator do this? If not, do you have any ideas how I would accomplish this? Are you going to make your autosteer through hydraulics or motor/wheel control like trimble? Have you ran one of those computers in the field because they look similar to one that the fellow from farmergps.com uses and he really liked his. Thanks Curt
Joined: May 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 2,694 Location: Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Re: Lefebure GPS « Reply #27 on Dec 18, 2007, 1:12am »
Hi Curt.
I guess the computer idea is pretty similar to FarmerGPS, which I didn't know existed until I started in on this project. Seems I'm not the only one that likes the idea of standardized hardware.
As for programming in the wee hours of the day, yeah, I actually do find myself doing that now. LOL
The only way I'm going to make this system steer is via hydraulics. Steering with a motor that attaches to the steering wheel is just a nusiance, and I don't want to bump by knee on it all day. I see it as a duct-tape type of solution - it works, but lacks precision.
The simulator I built doesn't do anything with the serial port. It generates the NMEA codes, and sends them over to the code that processes the data just as if it came from a real GPS receiver. What you need is a simulator that sends the NMEA data out to a serial port, then a null modem cable to the serial port of your system.
Does your autorate controller get its GPS info via a RS-232 serial port, or via some coax like antenna connection?
Joined: Jan 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 93 Location: Rumsey, AB
Re: Lefebure GPS « Reply #28 on Dec 18, 2007, 1:04pm »
Hi Lance, My autorate gets the signal through Nmea and a 9 pin serial connections, standard gps input for the most part. I agree on the hydraulic steering, we have the ez steer and it works at slower speeds and is nice to move around but hydraulics would be the cadillac. Curt
Joined: May 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 2,694 Location: Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Re: Lefebure GPS « Reply #29 on Dec 18, 2007, 3:34pm »
Quote:
My autorate gets the signal through Nmea and a 9 pin serial connections, standard gps input for the most part.
Excellent. I pulled the simulator code out of my auto-steer app and put it into a stand alone program. It generates GPRMC and GPGSV codes. I think most devices can use the RMC codes, so it should do what you need it to do.
Prerequisite: You need to have the .Net framework installed (at least version 2.0) before this software will run. If you don't have it, it will tell you so when you try to run the program. If you need it, google for ".net 2.0 framework download", or install it from the optional software section in windows update.
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