John Deere's Machine Sync lets multiple machines share coverage maps and guidance lines during planting and harvesting. Test operator Mike Pellet explains how it improves efficiency in irregular fields and multi-machine setups.
Producers understand the value of timely field operations. And John Deere has new and expanded solutions to optimize equipment performance during these critical windows. Planting, for example, used to be about an operator with a single machine. Now it's about multiple machines with multiple operators. So machine to machine communication is now critical for optimized performance. If you remember, Machine Sync revolutionized harvest automation and harvest logistics with combine and tractor grain cart communication. Now we've taken machine sync to the next level by adding the capability to share coverage maps and guidance lines. That means machine sync is no longer just a harvest solution. The new enhanced Machine sync works seamlessly with John Deere auto track and John Deere section control and does it across multiple machines working in the same field. So now machines communicate with each other as they work, and the result is more productivity, efficiency and accuracy. Sharing coverage maps while planting or seeding allows any John Deere machine enabled for John Deere section control to trigger sections on and off based on another machine's coverage. We asked Mike Pellet, one of our test cooperators, about his experience with machine Sync. Here's what he had to say.
In our operations, we use coverage map sharing for both planting and harvest operations. In the planting operation, it has allowed us to add a third planter. We run a lot of irregular shaped fields with a lot of terraces, a lot of waterways. We run two of them in the same field at the same time almost all the time. And without coverage map sharing, that would be nearly impossible. John intersection control is critical in those situations. One machine knowing where the other one is so it knows when to shut off in order to control our costs and increase our efficiencies that way has been extremely beneficial.
When harvesting with multiple combines or cotton harvesters, the new enhanced machine sink provides more accurate calculation of yield and acre total. Coverage Map sharing used in conjunction with overlap control gives machine sink visibility to where another harvester has already been.
You know, the thing that really took this to the next level is the coverage. Map sharing in the combines is in our operation is about 100% related to the data that's coming off of it. The acres are correct, the passes are correct, the header width using overlap control is correct because it knows where the other machine has been, which in turn equates to better yields, which in turn equates to the correct acres, which is better data.
Guidance line sharing allows multiple machines the ability to plant with the perfection of a single planter while realizing the productivity and efficiency gains that comes with running multiple machines simultaneously.
Guidance line sharing is extremely beneficial. From the fact that no longer do we have to punch in our guidance line coordinates and line up our AB line starts and such where you can and whether the one machine sends it or one machine pulls it from the other one, you can be anywhere in the field and share the guidance lines back and forth with each other. Machine Sync has been an effective tool in the past in connecting the combine and the grain cart together in order to increase harvest efficiency by adding coverage, map sharing and guidance line sharing to it. It's going to take that efficiency to the next level for those operators that use multiple machines in the same field at the same time.
With these new enhance, Machine Sync is sure to increase the performance and efficiency of field operations across the entire production cycle.
