Near Intersection of I-35 & I-90 Southern Mn. | Ron - I believe that the FMD does NOT (later edit) use the Reference Map concept that we have discussed.
Remember the FMD cannot be used as a Yield Monitor. Ag Leader is hanging on to that part.
I am not very familiar with the FMD. I am very familiar with the Insight since I own two and work with them daily at my off farm job.
I am obviously prejudiced toward the Insight due to these associations and may not give a fair assesement of the FMD.
It appears to me that the data handling and manipulations available with the Insight although certainly not perfect, far exceed the capabilities of the FMD.
I was rather disappointed when I got an EZ-Guide 500 and explored the data handling system (or lack of one) that I found. Possibly I was just spoiled by my experience with the Insight but I assumed that the Trimble would have a far more sophisticated arrangement. I am of the opinion that the data handling scheme on the FMD is consistent with what I have seen on the 500. This is not to say that the 500 is not a fine product but it is lacking in this area.
The Insight system has a wide range of capabilities in working with many situations such as planting, spraying, spreading, strip-till and lest I forget - yield monitoring.
In most cases, the Insight system works very well with Raven components which are widely available and accessible. This makes for a good fit for a Raven/Ag Leader dealer such as I work for.
Trimble has made some alliances with Dickey-John and these type of application situations are apparently being addressed.
I understand that an autopilot can be calibrated directly from an FMD whereas it cannot be done directly with an Insight. The autopilot calibration procedure with an Insight does require a laptop.
It appears to me that the FMD's main purpose in life was to support the autopilot system and that these other tasks were secondary and came along after the fact. On the other hand, the Insight's main purpose in life was to support yield and application situations and was expanded to handle the steering interface.
As far as the autopilot goes, the steering is actually handled by the same Nav II box in either case, The FMD or Insight are just two of the displays that can be used to communicate your wishes to the Nav II.
Concerning the swapping between two tractors. It was correctly stated that the calibration can be done in each tractor with the FMD and not the Insight. If you were using and moving an Insight it would be necessary to use a laptop to calibrate the autopilot in each tractor. However, once the calibration was done in each tractor this calibration can be saved and reloaded easily when the autopilot is moved to the other tractor. This would make the swapping fairly simple. Each autopilot configuration can be saved with a descriptive name such as "8430T Tillage" to make it easy for future use.
Edited by tedbear 8/22/2008 11:53
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insight or field manager display
