SALES

NEW PRODUCT

When we talk about connected agriculture, it is easy to think first about the newest tractors: CANbus, ISOBUS, fuel consumption, engine parameters and diagnostics.
But the real fleet of a farm or agricultural company is usually much more diverse.

Alongside a new tractor, there may be machines that are ten or twenty years old, harvesters, self-propelled machines, telehandlers and other vehicles used every day across the farm.

They are all valuable assets. They consume fuel, require maintenance, are operated by different people and accumulate working hours.

Yet many farms still cannot immediately answer some very simple questions.

• Where is that machine now?
• How many hours did it work this week?
• Which routes did it travel?
• How far did it travel?
• Which machines are being used the most, and which are being underused?

This is where telematics starts to become useful.

Tracker Lite

UX0P4G21AM

Tracker Lite is designed for basic fleet localization and monitoring. Installation requires only two power wires. GPS and mobile connectivity are already integrated, with the first year of service included.

There is no need to source a separate SIM card, arrange an additional mobile contract or configure a communication system for every vehicle.

Once connected, the machine becomes visible in MyFarmnavigator.

From any browser or smartphone, the farm can monitor vehicle location, review previous trips and analyse information such as operating hours, distance travelled and speed. MyFarmnavigator centralizes connected agricultural vehicles and makes their activity available from one cloud platform.

Tracker Agri

UX0P4T00AM

When more information is required, Tracker Agri adds another level of telemetry.

Tracker Agri integrates GPS, 4G connectivity, an inertial platform and CANbus. When the information is available from the vehicle, MyFarmnavigator can also analyse parameters such as fuel level, fuel consumption, engine RPM and engine temperature.

The important point is that the two products do not necessarily solve the same problem.

A recent tractor may justify detailed CANbus monitoring. An older tractor, telehandler, harvester or seasonal machine may simply need to be located and have its working hours and movements recorded automatically.

This makes it possible to decide how much connectivity each machine actually needs, instead of applying the most complex solution to the entire fleet.

An European research case (University of Bologna) analysed real operating data from a 198 kW agricultural tractor performing different farm operations.

During the monitored period, the tractor spent 59% of its time performing field activities, while 25% of the recorded time was classified as idling.

The same study calculated that fuel and labour together represented between 63% and 71% of the total cost per hectare for the operations analysed.

This does not mean that 25% of tractor time can simply be eliminated. Agricultural machines have legitimate waiting periods. They need to be prepared, moved, serviced and sometimes synchronized with other machines.

The important point is different: without data, that 25% is almost impossible to analyse.

Now imagine a farm with eight vehicles accumulating a combined 5,000 hours per year.

If only 5% of that time could be associated with avoidable movements, waiting or organizational inefficiencies, that would represent 250 hours per year worth analysing.

The farm can then ask much better questions.

• Which machine generated those hours?
• During which period?
• On which routes?
• Doing what type of activity?
• Is one tractor accumulating substantially more hours than another?
• Are machines travelling repeatedly between the same locations?
• Could work have been organized differently?

Telematics does not make those decisions for the farmer.

It shows where to look.

The scale of the operation can make fleet visibility even more important.

On a large property, the question “Where is the tractor?” can therefore have a very different meaning.

It may not be parked behind another shed. It may be kilometres away.
In this type of environment, connecting a fleet does not necessarily have to begin with sophisticated machine integration.

For a mixed fleet of tractors, harvesters, sprayers, loaders and support vehicles, simply creating one central view of location, movements and operating hours can already provide a much clearer picture of how machinery is actually being used.

Telematics is often introduced together with the purchase of a new tractor.

But that leaves an important part of the market untouched. Many farms already own a significant number of machines that are completely disconnected. And these may be the most interesting machines to connect.

A customer may not want to invest in advanced CANbus telemetry for a tractor that works only a few hundred hours per year.

But the same customer may still want to know where that tractor is, when it was used, how many hours it worked and which routes it travelled.

The real advantage is not having another electronic box installed on a tractor: it is being able to open one platform and see what is happening across the fleet.

MyFarmnavigator brings connected vehicles into the same environment, providing real-time localization, trip history and telemetry information including hours, distance and vehicle performance according to the connected device.

• For a farm with two machines, this means convenience.
• For a contractor, large farm or agro-industrial company managing ten, twenty or fifty vehicles, it can become a management tool.

The technology is the same.
The value grows with the number of machines, operators, fields and kilometres that need to be coordinated.

Not every fleet has standard requirements.

An agricultural machinery manufacturer may need to collect a specific parameter.

An agro-industrial company may need to monitor agricultural machines and support vehicles together.

An OEM may want telematics integrated directly into its own machine, service infrastructure or digital platform.

AvMap has developed telematics technology for decades across automotive, aeronautical and other professional applications, and this experience is also behind Tracker Agri and the Farmnavigator connected ecosystem.