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Australia | A response by Leica Geosystems to the post by Buck: http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=33718&mid=2344...
Gerald,
I can understand your skepticism of a new company coming into the autosteer market. Many have tried, and quite a few have failed. I hope I can address some of your concerns if they are genuine and not competitively motivated. I fully respect that this forum is about honesty and not marketing hype or sales.
Firstly, Leica Geosystems (www.leica-geosystems.com) is a 180 year old Swiss-based company which is part of the $6.3 billion Hexagon (www.hexagon.se) group. You don't get to be around this long being 'shady'. Hexagon is the world's largest measurement company with revenues roughly twice that of our largest competitors, Trimble Navigation and Topcon. In itself, this doesn't mean we can do everything our competitors are doing in Ag with our first product... but it does mean we have the financial stamina to ensure that we will.
More importantly, we have the people to do the job. We have hired marketing, support and engineering staff from many of the major Ag electronics companies. These people know farming and know the GPS guidance industry needs.
We are doing things differently. We are priced differently, we look different and most importantly we support differently. We don't pretend to be a copy of the major competitors' products because we are focusing on what they have all failed to do. That is provide reliable RTK auto-steer at a good price with support you can't beat. Ask any farmer or dealer what their biggest concern is - the inability to quickly diagnose and support sophisticated electronics in the field. All Leica Ag products will be Virtual Wrench compatible going forward for this very reason. The whistles and bells will come when they are ready for the field, no sooner.
To address your points:
1) The basic mojoRTK product currently ordered off the internet only stores the current waypoints. This does not mean it isn't a 'repeatable' system. All dual frequency RTK receivers are repeatable by definition whether they store waypoints or not. For example, many 3ft WAAS guidance systems store field waypoints, but this does not make them 'repeatable' year after year. They 'drift' all over the place. With mojoRTK, once your wheels are back in the rows you can 'repeat' this across the field, year after year to within 2-inches. Many farmers with exisiting RTK autosteer systems never bother to store field waypoints due to management complexity. They still get repeatability. They just want to set and run, but I do respect your needs are different. Stay tuned for more options here as well.
2) People without cell phones would be in the minority in 2007, even hired hands. Without a driver's cell phone onboard, we can view and diagnose and even tune the steering of the system without talking to the driver. We could be talking to you in your office while looking at the machine running in the field. Our cell booster kit with a high gain antenna means that even when you don't have cell coverage on your phone, we get connection with Virtual Wrench. It is still faster and more effective than waiting for a service tech to drive out, especially during the busy months when you are needing guidance now.
3) We do in fact steer the machines you mentioned with integrated steering valves including the new 30 series directly through the CANbus connector. You are right that there needs to be proof, so now that you have heard from a mojoRTK customer, this issue should be settled. Why would a 180 year old company with a lot to lose, lie about this in the first place?
4) The basic mojoRTK ordered off the internet only does straight-lines. For the mojority who never use pivots, or contour guidance, a $20k saving for a true RTK system should be enough for them not to lose sleep over this. Again, stay tuned.
5) Like all new products we did have our problems. To be telling people anything else would be an obvious lie. The AM/FM radio reception issue is now fixed and all existing customers are being upgraded with new radio boards (not Bandaids).
6) The product was released to our 'earlybird' web site customers over a month ago. They had exclusive access for being the first to register. Today we have opened the website as promised to the general public. mojoRTK is available now, not next Spring.
To finish, Leica was the first company in the world to release RTK positioning under the old Magnavox brand. While we have one of the best RTK positioning engines in the world, we are not promising "sub-inch" field performance like other RTK vendors. Why? because we know that the RTK products today cannot meet this accuracy (read their GPS engine specs!). We state a "2 inch" accuracy, but I think everyone will be surprised by our performance. No smoke and mirrors here, just an honest statement of our accuracy. Check this out for more accuracy information: http://www.mojortk.com/leica-web/app/content/public/content11946387...
Sorry for the long-winded response, but the allegations you raised I took very seriously. I hope this clears up any misconceptions regarding the trustworthiness of Leica and our products.
John Hill | |
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Leica mojoRTK - Reality Check
