Near Intersection of I-35 & I-90 Southern Mn. | Ron - when making a boundary be sure that it is correct for this year's planting.
My first year with autoswath I used a previous years boundary and when I sprayed the outside pass on the ends (headland) a two foot gap was unsprayed because the current year's field was slightly smaller than the boundary indicated.
As I approached the headland, the sprayer sections turned off as expected but unkown (I didn't realize this) to me, the an outer section (Boom 1 or Boom 4 in my case) came back ON for a bit. The reason being that the system felt it shoud spray that small gap between the real outside of the field and the outside as determined by the boundary.
This resulted in killing some grass along my brother's driveway. Now I use the technique described above of shutting the Master OFF when the autoswath has shut all the booms off. This will prevent any surprises like I had. Once I've made my turn and am completely back in the headlands which have been sprayed, I turn the Master back ON which will then allow autoswath to turn on the booms as it sees fit.
There are several different solutions. 1) make a new boundary when planting that is correct for this year. 2) create a new boundary that is correct when actually spraying this year. 3) always use the Master on the ends to prevent surprises.
The purist would argue that with autoswath it should not be necessary for the operator to use the Master in these situations. The practical side of me says - its not really that hard and we've been doing it for years. The timing is not critical.
By the way other systems such as EZ-Boom do not allow the boundary concept and the operator must always use the Master to prevent this type of situation.
Also I have a field or two where there are no headlands on one end of the field since the field runs into another field of our own which is usually the same crop planted in a perpendicular direction. Even if this other field has already been sprayed, the coverage is not shown with the current field so autoswath will not shutoff the booms correctly without a good boundary. Since this boundary often moves a bit from year to year, I just don't bother with a new boundary each year and shut the Master off myself.
Another change I have made this year is to set my autoswath settings a bit differently. I have always used "minimize skip" when applying to be certain that all areas get sprayed. This means that on point rows (I have very few anyway) that the boom would not shut off until the entire section is sprayed.
This results in some double coverage which isn't a problem with my chemicals. A slight problem occurred when I made my second pass on a new field. Since I plant 30' but spray 60', I am able to drive on the planter tracks for the majority of the field. My sprayer is setup in 4-15" sections.
However on my first pass, I usually have to drive on the "guess row". I spray a full 60' and then come back only moving over 45'. Autoswath will shutoff the outer section that is passing over the area covered on the first pass. I notice that autoswath gets a bit confused a times (probably due to GPS drift) and will cycle this outer section ON for a few seconds and then OFF.
This is not that terrible of a problem and I could just force that boom section OFF with the section switch but then I might forget to turn it back ON for subsequent passes. This would be pretty obvious from the map. Another solution which seems to work is to change the autoswath settings from Minimize skip to the third choice of Percentage of coverage. This feature was always available on Raven autoswath and has recently been added to the Insight.
Here I set the value to 80% which seems to take care of the inappropriate section cycling on my first pass. This will shut off the sections somewhat sooner on point rows which might be a problem but I haven't noticed it to be so for me.
Ron - setting this value to 80% might also help out your problem of the headlands.
Concerning the creation of boundaries. It is not necessary to go "completely around" a field to make a boundary. As you have probably noticed, as you create a boundary, the black line keeps shooting back to the starting point like many drawing programs do.
Depending on the shape of the field it is not necessary at times to drive the "last side". If the field is a rectangle it is only necessary to drive the first three sides as when you reach the final vertex, the line will be shooting back to the first vertex. If this correctly represents the field then you can complete the boundary then. If the "last side" is not that straight you would need to continue to drive until the picture "looks right".
When making a new "outer boundary" be sure to delete the old outer boundary first otherwise the system will assume you are making a new "inner boundary". I did this once and the old boundary was considered the true outer boundary and the new boundary was considered a new inner boundary. This resulted in a picture frame shaped field.
The area of this picture frame was reported as 6 acres which was probably correct as that was likely the difference between the old boundary and the new boundary in this 100 acre field.
I was able to delete this new incorrect inner boundary. Then the area returned to a more realistic figure. I then deleted the old boundary and made a new OUTER boundary which is what I should have done in the first attempt.
Edited by tedbear 6/16/2008 07:07
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Auto-Swath & boundaries w/Insight
