Farmers Who Code - Part Two

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

When Alberta farmer Brian Tischler discovered how to code his own mapping technology for seeding, he posted it on a website called Combine Forum. Other farmers chimed in on which features he could add next. One of which was section control.

Tischler… “When you're seeding, you don't want to see that spot again. You want to turn the seed or the spray or the application that you're doing. You want to turn it on precisely so that when the product hits the ground, it continues on where you left off. So you're controlling the machine on/ off very accurately. And because GPS knows where it is, where you've been and where you're going, it allows the software then to control that machine precisely.”

So an open source project was born, and Tischler found a way to make his own section control much cheaper than any product that existed on the market.

Tischler… “Air seeder type section control is quite expensive, and you're looking at thousands and thousands of dollars. And in the end it was $19 for a little tiny Arduino microcomputer and a relay pack for about six bucks. So effectively then connected that to the serial port of my tablet, and connected the tablet to the GPS. And I had section control for like $30.”

This project has grown into what is now AgOpenGPS, a community of thousands of farm technology enthusiasts around the world.