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Would you download a tractor?

John Deere believes in the Internet of Everything--as long as they have absolute control of everything. They discontinue parts and you are supposed to purchase the new model because they do not support the old one anymore. You can replace a part, but without a John Deere engineer enabling it, it will not work. One farmer said that when his tractor breaks down it costs him a thousand dollars just to load it onto a truck, not to mention the rest of the charges, and they cannot be fixed in a timely fashion, so they are trying to hack the tractors so they can fix them quickly and inexpensively. There is also a legal Right to Repair battle and Microsoft and Apple sent representatives claiming this was a bad move.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8JCh0owT4w

Two words: factory farms. Tractors drive themselves, satellites monitor field performance, when will the farmer be an unnecessary expense?

It's coming, I hope farmers prepare for ththe change...

I read a comment that the U.S. steel industry is paying the price for not reinvesting in itself after World War II.

I cannot imagine that anyone currently dealing with this was involved back then.

Manufacturers have the right and responsibility to set end of life support for aging technology. You can't expect a manufacturer to build parts for something that has long since been obsolete. Owners have the right to repair, but manufacturers have the right to Intellectual Property (mostly software code).

Anyhow, I'm no expert on JD, but there are alternative brands, and people should know that buying a premium brand incurs a premium price.

I drove a GPS equipped JD with grade attachment a couple summers ago. My job was to make the turns at the end of rows and get within a couple feet of where I need to be, and then push a button to enable self steering. No reason it couldn't be equipped to make the turns and adjust the blade depth, too. Farm fields are the perfect place for automation.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:31702/comments
https://cdn.thingiverse.com/renders/...w_featured.jpg

Jack Rickards take: Right to Repair - Why it Matters... - EVTV Motor Verks

Quote:

I am most pleased to be able to note on this April day in 2015, that twenty five years ago we reported in Boardwatch Magazine the formation of a non-profit organization, the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Originally born of the vision of Grateful Dead lyricist and Whole Earth Lectronic Link resident cyberpoet/scribe John Perry Barlowe, this organization was formed to defend our rights on a new “digital frontier”. Barlowe was joined early by Mitch Kapore, a heroically successful for that day entrepreneur and head of Lotus 123, the dominant spreadsheet software program of the time. The third key supporter was John Gilmore, who was Sun Microsystems employee number of five and really at the heart of the very early days of the Internet. So early, his TOAD.COM remains probably among the oldest dozen or so of Internet domains – he still owns it.

He goes on to describe the effects of the DCMA:

Quote:

We had to figure out, using basically stolen diagrams and software, how to repair a TWO YEAR OLD vehicle with 4800 miles on i

To fight it is to feed it, Open Source hardware: https://www.opensourceecology.org
https://d2t1xqejof9utc.cloudfront.ne...rge?1376305658

Two years?! That has long since been obsolete!

This is why I have a 30 year old tractor.

I like the Farmall Cub they show at 2:29.

Oil Pan, do you have difficulty finding replacement parts?

As far as I know I can find replacement parts or get an upgrade part off the next generation or 2 of tractor.
Plus there is a huge aftermarket for tractor parts.