Farmers, under price and quality demands from Supermarket buyers, are forced to think of new ways to grow and harvest their crops. When these demands require special agricultural machinery, farmers turn to entrepreneur Richard Larrington of Boston, Lincolnshire, for engineering solutions. Richard Larrington Limited design and manufacture a towed straw spreader that lays a polythene sheet and straw blanket over field grown root crops to extend their storage time and protect them from frost or snow. Supermarkets call for “fresh” carrots throughout the winter and carrots stored where grown are “fresher and more presentable” than those traditionally harvested in late autumn and stored throughout the winter in sand pits. Farmers, who have used the Larrington straw spreader over a number of seasons, were ordering new models and asking for increased productivity and more automatic functions. Richard Larrington contacted Zeta Automotive to investigate how he could improve his control system to accommodate these demands.
For over a year Zeta Automotive had been hard at work developing a highly flexible, user programmable CAN system to control the functionality of specialist vehicles, plant or agricultural machinery. They suggested that this technology could offer reliable, automatic and proportional control for his application and still be a cost-effective solution. CAN stands for “Controller Area Network” and comprises a number of control nodes connected by a 4-wire “bus”. Each node can be configured to a wide range of inputs and outputs. Input signals can be digital, analogue or pulsed tachometer. Outputs can switch digital devices such as lamps, provide pulse width modulated (PWM) signals for proportional valves or motor control and drive a variety of actuators. Nodes are sited strategically around the equipment and controlled by a master node with a man machine interface. This interface can range from a simple LCD display, incorporating 4 push buttons, to a large control panel with LCD screen and up to 34 switches. The first CANbus systems had been proved and were already in production use on roadsweepers. With deadlines set by the first expected frosts, Zeta set to work with the Richard Larrington team to complete the control system for a completely new application. Once the Statement of Requirement had been agreed it took less than 4 weeks to get a fully rigged straw spreader into production with a CANbus system. Zeta Automotive had proved that their CAN technology was easily ported from municipal vehicles into specialist agricultural equipment.
CANbus is highly flexible and can be quickly programmed via a serial link to a PC. The programming is done with a special MS Excel application known as the Zeta Modus Manager. Developed by Zeta software engineers this graphical user interface enables the end user to easily reconfigure the system should the requirement change. All the electronic nodes are housed in IP65 rugged dust and waterproof enclosures. In built diagnostics can detect system faults such as over currents and open or short circuits, for example a blown light bulb or a shorted hydraulic valve coil. These conditions can be flagged on the display or communicated to a remote site via a modem. Projects similar to the straw spreader typically take four weeks to implement and are supported by a team of application engineers just to help customers integrate the new technology into their application smoothly.
Richard Larrington commented…..“Zeta has taken on the complete engineering of the electronic control system, and I cannot fault their dedication or ability to assist me in developing the most advanced straw spreader far exceeding our expectations.”
Zeta Automotive is an innovative engineering company with over 15 years experience in electronic control systems. It has won no less than four SMART awards from the Department of Trade and Industry for the development of cutting edge products based on emergent technology.
