The world of ag tech keeps advancing quickly. The data-gathering tools you drive, which most farmers call tractors and combines, collect information that often needs to be on another system to be of use. Trimble, which innovated with its Connected Farm concept years ago, is upping the ante with a new entry-level platform that includes an added innovation — AutoSync.

While Farmer Core — the new entry level system from Trimble allowing farmers to set up cloud-based tools for managing equipment and information — was key to the announcement, AutoSync is an innovation many farmers will appreciate.

“AutoSync is basically a new functionality that makes data management between Trimble’s displays and cloud-based management solutions seamless,” explains Scott Reinert, product manager, Trimble. “The system is available on Farmer Core, our new base system, but is available as an upgrade to Farmer Fit and Farmer Pro, our higher-level services.”

Reinert talks about data management and the challenges that brings to the farm, noting that best practice for a farm would be for the data to be available on all platforms when needed, without the added steps of carting USB sticks from office to machine. More services offer ways to move those files wirelessly; AutoSync goes a step further and just makes it happen.

“AutoSync ties the displays together. It’s beneficial when you have two or more displays on the farm, and this helps keep the displays current,” Reinert says. “You have the same set of resources and information on all displays.”

Clean up first

AutoSync can ease data management on the farm, making sure the most current A/B lines are in the guidance system, the right field names are there for recording field actions and information is lined up properly. But Reinert adds that farmers will want to be sure that they have a clean set of information to start.

“If a farmer has data sets duplicated on different displays and there is mismatched information, like field names or A/B guidance lines, we recommend they start with one display and get their data corrected,” he says. “They sync from that display to others on the farm to make sure you have the desired sets of fields with the right A/B lines and any other resources.”

He even advises wiping data off other displays before syncing information from a “master” display to avoid carrying mistakes over in data collection.

With the cleaned-up displays, Reinert says AutoSync can then help pull down the right information from the master file to get into the field and start working. Having clean data in the cloud and using the Connected Farm system allows Trimble customers to keep information clean and gather high-quality data for their farms.

Farmer Core is the new entry-level system from Trimble. With this system, farmers can simply farm setup by creating farm and field names, importing or drawing new field boundaries and mapping landmarks with Trimble Ag Mobile. With AutoSync, that information will then move across all Trimble-linked tools on the farm — from laptop to smartphone to tablets to Trimble displays using the company’s Precision IQ software.

With the base system, you can manage guidance lines and boundaries, field names and other information, and integrate all machine-generated data from Trimble displays and other sources using application program interfaces (APIs).

Farmer Core even allows you to track purchases and costs by fields, improve consistency of ag data and generate “proof of placement” reports for your records and for use by third parties.

The price for Farmer Core is $199 per year. Connecting displays with AutoSync requires a Display Connection, which is $99 per display per year. You can learn more at the Trimble Farmer Core webpage.

Source: Willie Vogt, Dakota Farmer