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”).
Once again, the AEF put on another successful ISOBUS Plugfest last month. Approximately 130 individuals associated with electronics for Ag equipment spent the week of May 8th at the Embassy Suites in Lincoln, NE. The key attraction is the Plugfest itself, during which nearly 1000 combinations of implement ECUs and displays were tested.
Once again, another ISOBUS Plugfest is upon us. On May 9th, dozens of Ag electronics engineers from around the globe will descend upon the Embassy Suites in Lincoln, NE, for three days of testing. ISOBUS exists to provide a standardized method of communicating between Ag vehicles and Ag implements, and Plugfest exists to do a quick spot-check on different types of equipment in one location. I strongly recommend attending a Plugfest for anyone involved in engineering networked electronics for heavy equipment, especially if that equipment supports third-party additions.
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!
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.
The ISOBUS Fall 2015 Plugfest wrapped up a couple weeks ago in Wörth am Main, Germany. If you do not know what ISOBUS or its Plugfest are, you can look at my previous blogs for a tutorial.
Last week in Lincoln, NE, engineers from around the world converged for another ISOBUS Plugfest to test their ISOBUS devices with other manufacturers’ ISOBUS devices. If you do not know what ISOBUS is, then you probably have not read any of my previous blog posts! At the crux of ISOBUS is the ability to connect many different types of electronic components together from different manufacturers and have them all work together. So Plugfest provides the opportunity to test that all the different equipment works well together.
I discussed in Part 2 of the Task Controller (TC) series a type of TC that uses geo-referencing for data-logging. This form of TC has an AEF Functionality called TC-GEO, but there is another type of TC-GEO that is very enticing to farmers. Using prescription mapping and TC-GEO, a farmer can do variable-rate application to control the amount of fertilizer, herbicide, or other inputs by position in the field. Some of the obvious benefits of this approach include reduced input costs, but there are also environmental benefits.
The Fall ISOBUS Plugfest has wrapped up here in Senlis, France. This Plugfest set a new record for attendees and participants. The final tally was over 250 attendees, 40 different test stations, 137 participants, 82 implements, and over 2300 test slots. It was quite a busy event, so kudos to the organizing committee for working through all those logistics. The slots were shortened to 20 minutes each which is probably a bit too short, but there is ongoing conversation to increase that again … possibly using some “creative” means. And with so many people attending, the building facilities are also an important consideration which seems to have worked out quite well.
