My blog posting this year seems to be following the Steve Miller Band lyric, “Time keeps on slippin’ into the future.” It is now a full month since the AEF ISOBUS Spring Plugfest and I am just now writing my recap. I normally try to get these out sooner, especially since the Fall Plugfest is not too far away…
Another ISOBUS Plugfest week is almost here. From May 14-18, the AEF will once again host engineers from around the world for ISOBUS testing and some related events in Lincoln, NE. I have previously explained the mechanics of a Plugfest, so go take a look at some of my old blog posts if you want more info on that. The initial schedule I saw for this year showed 66 different pieces of equipment that will be tested during the three days of the Plugfest. DISTek will be participating with our VIRTEC stack and with our VT Server application. In total, DISTek expects to have 5-7 people attending Plugfest.
Much of the software engineering industry uses testing techniques that aren’t often available to those of us in the embedded industry. In my experience, this has definitely been true of automated UI testing while working on ISOBUS VT clients. In a previous position, I spent much of my time creating test frameworks, including those for testing web applications through the UI.
Regular DISTek blog readers will have noticed that we took a VT server implementation to AEF PlugFest in spring 2017. Part of our motivation from the start of this project has been to give VT client developers the ability to automate functional testing of their applications.
As I write this, we are less than two weeks removed from the most recent ISOBUS Plugfest, held at the Maritim Hotel in Stuttgart the week of 16 October 2017. As in past years, the Plugfest itself was held Tuesday-Thursday while several other AEF meetings were scheduled Monday-Friday. The Plugfest this year was either the biggest ever, or at least quite close……
The ISOBUS Plugfest is nearly upon us once again. Each spring in Lincoln, NE, and each fall in Europe, the AEF (Ag Electronics Foundation) coordinates a Plugfest during which ag electronics from different manufacturers are tested for interoperability. This fall, Plugfest is October 17-19 and engineers from around the world will be meeting in Stuttgart, Germany. I counted quickly so my numbers may be off, but I think there will be 74 Ag implement systems (“Clients”) and 42 Ag displays (“Servers”).
Here at DISTek we just competed our 24th full calendar year as a company, which means our 25th anniversary happens in 2017. We are excited to think about our future as we pass this milestone, but it is also healthy to step back and review what we did in 2016. We took some bumps and bruises along the way – as did many in the industries we serve – but we also had some exciting successes.
Another successful AEF ISOBUS Plugfest is in the bag. You can check out some of my prior blog posts if you want more detail on what a Plugfest entails, but in short, it is a meetup of Ag electronics manufacturers to test their own equipment with other manufacturers’ equipment. This was a record-breaking Plugfest in terms of participation and it made for some challenges in getting enough time for all participants to test with other manufacturer’s products.
It is that time of year again – the kids are back in school, the nights have started to get cool, and Plugfest is just around the corner. The Ag electronics community from around the world will descend on Bologna, Italy, on September 13th for another edition of the ISOBUS Fall Plugfest.
As usual, the Spring ISOBUS PlugFest was held this past May 10-12 in sunny Lincoln, Nebraska. Sadly, Benjamin Jefferson had to miss this time at the last minute, but his bad luck turned out in your humble author’s favor, as I (a newer member of the VIRTEC team) got to experience PlugFest first-hand!
Dawn Equipment Company, an implement manufacturer located near Chicago, turned to DISTek to solve an ISOBUS-related issue. (ISOBUS is the ag industry’s solution to compatibility between different manufacturers’ electronics.)
The ISOBUS Spring 2016 Plugfest is just around the corner on May 10-12. As has been the case for a while, the event will again be in Lincoln, NE.
For Immediate Release
Cedar Falls, IA – March 1, 2016 – DISTek Integration, Inc., an acknowledged world leader in ISOBUS technology, today announced a partnership with STW Technic, a premier manufacturer of mobile controllers and measurement technology, to provide a flexible and powerful ISOBUS-compliant electronic controller for the agriculture marketplace.
