I Turned My Tractor Into A Robot!

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Tuesday morning, the 31st of March.

[00:00:05]Anyway, the uh dryer man is coming over today to service the dryer. So, he's going to check this dryer over everything. Burner, fan, bearings, belts.

[00:00:17]He has a good look through it. Didn't get much use last year. Um which is not a bad thing ever cuz uh the fuel it takes to run this thing is uh crazy. And yeah, so mobile dryer. We can take it to Peters. We can take it wherever we're going. Take it back home. On those tricky summers where you just can't get a break in the weather, you can just be getting on when others can't. So, uh, it's a very useful tool on those tricky summers. It's not many summers this thing doesn't get used. So, uh, yeah, if it's if it's a dry summer like last year, brilliant. You know, you don't have to use it, but prices weren't great either. So you are not spending that extra money on fuel and you have to have a tractor on the front of it running uh driving the PTO which is the fan and then you've got the fuel for the burner so it's not a cheap tool to run. Um yeah all belts and uh uh the burner is in the top there blowing hot air in. The grain gets circulated over and over. It goes right up in the sky. You must have seen it if you've if you're a regular viewer here. But anyway, the man's coming.

[00:01:25]We'll get a tractor down here for him so we can run it up and test everything.

[00:01:30]But, uh, it shouldn't want too much done to it. It was serviced last year, but we always keep it serviced. We do not want that breaking down when we want to be using it. See this bushy line here?

[00:01:41]Davo showed me some footage cuz he was here helping his dad. Yeah, there's a bushy little section here. And there is a field drain that runs directly under my foot through this wet hole and to wherever. They show up when it's wet and they show up when it's dry. the field drains because they're the uh the driest area for plants to grow and they're also the bit where the water goes. So, they show up every year. Uh anyway, on the whole, it's looking pretty good over here. This is obviously a wet hole we're stood in, but on the whole over everything, it's looking pretty pretty good. Um with its uh fertilizer and fungicide on there, it should be uh yeah, it should uh be nice and healthy.

[00:02:22]Uh it will have one more fertilizer application in about 3 to four weeks time. Uh and possibly another one if weather plays ball. Uh if the wheat's looking right. Um just to boost those proteins up just before harvest. So Jim likes to put an extra small dose on just before harvest, just before it starts changing color. if it's going to get a shower, you know, if it's going to get used, uh, just to boost those proteins in the seeds cuz it's a milling variety, this one. So, Davo was out here with his dad fertilizing at the weekend and uh, yeah, looking from the pictures on his drone, I sort of realized, you know, I should wait until about now to go and do the crop checking around the uh, areas of fields. I'm always a bit early. We're going out with the drone. But that is uh we call this one oakses.

[00:03:22]That's a fair old way to the end of that field. The other end isn't quite so good. There's a wet area on the other end of this field, but it's all level.

[00:03:30]It's all uh there's a bit of rust in the plant, which we should be going back green. In a week's time, that should all be dark green again.

[00:03:39]Um but looking really well from this end. And then coming into 40 acre this one.

[00:03:46]Another good field. They all drilled perfect. You know, it was great. It was really good going during uh during the drilling season, the autumn of 2025.

[00:03:59]Everything went in well.

[00:04:03]Anyway, from the drone, it looks amazing. And I might even come back when it's all greened up uh from its uh fungicide and um see what she looks like if we get a nice weekend next week or something. It's all time. I just uh yeah, we're always doing stuff. So, it's it's never easy to uh just get out and uh video all the crops and stuff like that cuz it takes a full day to to go around the crops, put the drone up, and then edit them. there. You just uh yeah, take a lot of effort to uh film the crops. Anyway, wet area in the center of this one. This is 60 acre. This is a big field. There's a wet area at the bottom here. These stood water for too long and drown the plants out, but they're very small areas in comparison to the size of the field. So, yeah, there we go.

[00:04:50]Anything it all looks well though on the whole. We're back out on the rolls. Mean Daisy, we're over here at Graeme and Martins's grass land. And uh it all wants a harrow and a roll. So we're out here. We're going to be cleaning away the uh rubbish around the Edlands, all these bits of sticks and everything.

[00:05:07]Daisy's just getting set up. We will follow on with the rolls after Daisy.

[00:05:12]There's a nice bit of grass out there.

[00:05:14]Actually, a lovely little start. So that's going to be uh that's a promising uh that's that it looks promising already. Uh yeah, we like to look after the grass here. Anyway, we're going to try out this U-turn thing. Oh, I need to set up her computer for her. We were going to widen you up, weren't we?

[00:05:30]>> Yeah. So, let's go to the menu and the uh implement library.

[00:05:38]Uh chain Harris, go to edit and then go to next.

[00:05:46]Next, and where it says 5.8, just set them to six. Yeah. or implement overall with that one.

[00:05:55]>> Both of them. Yeah. Set them both the same. Six.

[00:06:00]>> Just put six in now.

[00:06:01]>> Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. And that one.

[00:06:07]>> Yeah.

[00:06:07]>> Yep. Next.

[00:06:09]That's it. Now you'll be a little bit It'll be a tiny bit wider. All right.

[00:06:14]And uh are you connected? Just give her a minute if she needs a minute. Oh, she >> It's been connecting fast. That hasn't it?

[00:06:22]>> Yeah. I turned when we left and then I literally just as you pulled up at the gate I pressed that one.

[00:06:25]>> Yeah.

[00:06:26]>> And then it connected straight away.

[00:06:28]>> I mean >> it's good, isn't it? Good. Last year that was >> It was taking ages, wasn't it? Quite >> poorly. And it kept like knocking on and off last year.

[00:06:34]>> Yeah. And on the road it doesn't seem to disconnect now, does it?

[00:06:37]>> Well, yeah. If you look on the road, it is on there, but as soon as you start it comes back on.

[00:06:41]>> Oh, right.

[00:06:42]>> No, that's good.

[00:06:43]>> Yeah.

[00:06:44]>> Okay, cool. It says speed and it >> Yeah, it changed something, haven't they?

[00:06:49]>> Yeah, that's a bit.

[00:06:50]>> All right. You'll be all right.

[00:06:51]>> Yeah. Yeah, probably that gateway happened in it.

[00:06:54]>> That's it.

[00:06:55]>> Lovely job. And we'll end up in that field very last.

[00:06:59]>> All right.

[00:07:00]>> Nice one. See you later.

[00:07:02]>> There goes Daisy. There goes the Aris.

[00:07:04]She's going to put an A and B in there.

[00:07:06]We'll follow on then. We'll set ours the same.

[00:07:15]It's what gives you your stripes in the field. It leans the grass over one way, which looks like the white part of the stripe. And then when she comes back, it leans the grass over the other way, and that gives you your uh dark part for the stripes. That's what gives you your stripes in the field. Uh the stripes are just a byproduct of what we're doing.

[00:07:36]Oh god. Get rid of that rock.

[00:07:40]But the main of the job is to uh is to get a look over the field, bruise the grass over, encourage some growth, flatten the field out. It's actually drier out here than I thought it would be, so we shouldn't have a problem. We're wet.

[00:07:56]It's going to be a nice day. We're going to be out here most of the day. Well, all day. We're uh we're late starting, so we're going to be out here most of the day. We might not get done.

[00:08:07]We'll let Daisy get a few passes ahead of us and then we will get unfolded and start chasing her. Anyway, we're going to set this up to do U-turn. So, I will follow I will set my rolls to 6 m as well.

[00:08:24]And that way we can then we shouldn't have to steer at all in this field cuz the boundaries are already marked out in this one. Um, auto.

[00:08:42]Yeah. So, how tight we turn?

[00:08:47]We will go to this button here. It says configured to current. So, it's your setting for how tight you're going to turn. So, it's all done. We're going to go to about there and see how that works.

[00:09:07]Uh, auto turn. We need to set up an inner boundary. Oh, no. We don't need that.

[00:09:15]Oh, it's going to give us a boundary in a minute. When we uh drive into the field, it'll give us a boundary. And then we have to work our turning point in the field. So, we have to put an inner boundary uh the part where we're going to work.

[00:09:28]And we can turn we can get back on ourselves within three within three implement widths. So that's 12 uh 6 12 18.

[00:09:40]So we will see if we can get back on ourselves in that point. Right. So this block of land actually goes to uh it goes to one customer actually one of our uh good customers.

[00:09:56]Anyway, a load of rubbish here all off these trees. We'll put them back with the trees. They're just caught in the wind, I imagine. Might try and roll this track for them when we're done. We'll see how we go.

[00:10:12]Anyway, that can go down there to be picked up another day.

[00:10:16]Uh they planted a load of trees here in one of the schemes.

[00:10:21]Anyway, we're not here for that. Right, we should be able to see if we can set this up now.

[00:10:29]Oh, bliming door on this tractor where it's new, I think.

[00:10:36]Okay, we're going to set an A and B.

[00:10:39]We're both set at the same width, so we should be pretty similar.

[00:10:44]Going to run down our tracks.

[00:10:58]run down our tracks at like that. Set our A and then we'll get to the other end. Set our B. That'll make us really really uh on point. I'm just going to grab these bits of rubbish.

[00:11:16]Yeah.

[00:11:19]because it all ends up in the hay bales at the end of it, which then looks bad on us when you go to take them out and there's hay bales.

[00:11:29]There's rubbish in the hay bales. We do our best to pick everything up. You you will always miss some. You know, it's just what it is. But it's our job first on the grass fields to clean up the fields for a nice clean tidy hay.

[00:11:43]And we do our very best at that. You can't pick every last little thing up.

[00:11:48]So, it's just pick the worst up as we go. Otherwise, we will be in and out the tractors all day and all night.

[00:11:55]Right, let's see what this screen's going to do. I'm sorry, it's a bit dusty, but let's see what it's going to do. Now, I have to watch everything cuz this is the first time it's going to turn around on itself. So, I got to watch the headland. I got to watch our implement.

[00:12:11]Okay, we need to slow down a bit otherwise we're going to miss.

[00:12:18]Okay.

[00:12:21]Right. She got round on herself, but I would like her to use the edge of the field. So, just going to disengage for a minute. Go back to our uh party set there. Um, need to go back one. No, need to go to our field boundary 20 m.

[00:12:49]We can go to 18.

[00:12:53]That will get the tractor closer to the edge of the field.

[00:12:59]Okay, recalculate everything. Turn it on.

[00:13:05]Okay.

[00:13:07]Now, put her back on the line.

[00:13:12]Got to remember to go a bit slower on the uh drop a gear on the uh on the edland. And it's just a matter of fettling your positions, your meters to the headland and your worked area and stuff. But once you've got that perfected and you've uh honestly, it's a brilliant little thing. Um, yeah, it'll be interesting to see how our GPS's line up against each other as well. We're already drifting apart a little bit and we're the same width. So, I will on the next pass have to just recenter it, but we should turn around at this end.

[00:13:50]We were a little bit tight against our draw bar as well, which uh makes me a bit nervous. Uh, so we would need to adjust our steering angle on how tight it turns.

[00:14:04]But once you have all these settings in place, so we're still quite away from the Edlin there. So we could go to that was 18 m. We could probably take another meter off that.

[00:14:27]What we need to do is just line our wheels up again where Daisy's are. Hit that cuz hers will be moving for the next half an hour. Her her GPS will be moving.

[00:15:17]We have finally mastered it.

[00:15:20]You watch now. Only took me three hours.

[00:15:26]If farmer would if farmer to be fair, most of it I can do on the move. But if you were sat at the end of a field trying to figure this stuff out. Uh yeah, farmer would not be happy with me sat at the end of the field trying to figure all these Edlin things out. Anyway, we've managed to do it. When I go to the next field, I'll show you what I have to do to set it up. It's a right faf. I mean, you know, if it was a big field, it's worth doing, but for a little fields like this, it ain't. Anyway, when it comes to the Edlin now, we're going to slow down.

[00:16:01]Slow him down. Turning around.

[00:16:15]I'll tell you what I had the wrong way round. And then when we come to the end again, hits the blue line, back up the gear. I don't know why, but your initial button here is a little bit bigger. And it's just always tempting to hit that to cruise, if you know what I mean. But anyway, the cruise one is your slow down button and cruise two is your speed up button. So number one on here on your head management, you uh Yeah, I just swapped it all over.

[00:16:46]I knew it was I remember watching something where it was just hellishly confused. It's always back. It's all backwards to how you think it should be, if you know what I mean. But anyway, we got it working now. So, um yeah, it will slow down when it gets to the uh marked area. I think it's 24 m I've given us. And uh it will we've widened it up a bit so it takes a bit more time to turn so we're not turning so sharp on ourselves.

[00:17:16]So, slows down, turns around.

[00:17:20]Now, we could incorporate all our other stuff into this. If we had a trail drill on now, we could incorporate our markers and everything else into it. But, uh, to say it takes a bit of setting up is an understatement.

[00:17:35]Back up the gear. I don't have to touch the gears. It just slows down, turns around.

[00:17:42]It's very cool once you get it working, but yeah, it's took me a minute to figure it out.

[00:17:48]Um, but yeah, pretty cool cuz we uh what we're trying to do is follow Daisy's um AB lines as well. So, it's not uh these fields have all got their own AB lines.

[00:18:01]They've all been marked out. But to start with, the first thing you have to do is mark your headland boundary. That is a must. You got to start with that.

[00:18:10]Then you can get your auto turn engaged.

[00:18:13]Get that perfected. And then you can turn on your Edland, your auto headland they call it, which is where it will slow down and turn around. And you still got to be cautious about where you're driving.

[00:18:28]We've got some trees here. Look, just got to be cautious. You don't want to just switch off for good. If you've got uh if you've got, you know, um stuff in the field, pylons, anything like that, you know, don't want to just switch off, but it is pretty cool.

[00:18:47]Right, we go back into our settings.

[00:18:50]Your steering, how tight you turn, you just figure that out with your implement. how tight the tractor turns.

[00:18:56]You have to just figure that out. Um, and keep changing it until you're happy and it doesn't collide with the tractor or anything like that. Um, then there's a little circle icon up here. We need to tell the tractor we're going this way.

[00:19:11]Then we need to calculate the area. Then look at the map. Everything's green, so we're good. Then activate auto turn and then activate auto headland. Press okay.

[00:19:24]Then we need to come to our auto headlin turn that is on we turn and then we need to come to our everything's turned on for us automatically.

[00:19:47]Right now we engage a steering and then when we get to the end it should do the rest of the field for us. But it's a lot to usually you're sat at the edland doing that. And I've done what have I done? One, two, three, four. And I'm on the fifth pass down across the field uh before I set it up. So it shows you it just takes a minute to set all this up.

[00:20:08]And that's with a field boundary already put in. Uh that's with a new A and B put in there and all your other parameters turning everything on. Anyway, on this page here, this is your headland management page. And uh basically, yeah, I it took me some figuring out, but C1, you want to start with C1, and you want to set your cruise to your changing gear, as in your turning around gear, and literally set it to a speed you want, and then press and hold the C1 button, and then put it in your first on your first headliner management line.

[00:20:45]Uh, and that's all we want from our thing. We just want to slow down so we can turn around. And then number two, we want to speed back up again. So our cruise two is our speed that we're going down the field, which is 10k. Press and hold. That will set it to 10k.

[00:21:01]That's set up. Then then make sure it's on start. And then we can go into the headlin page and we can adjust a few things here just before and after the line. Here's the line, the inside line.

[00:21:13]Going to slow down.

[00:21:15]Turn around.

[00:21:18]If you're turning around too sharp, you need to adjust your steering angle. If you're turning around far too, you know, too wide, then you need to close it down a bit.

[00:21:33]Then when we get to the line again, going back up to the cruise speed. Nice.

[00:21:39]And the other one I just want to see if I can change I want to change this to I just want it to slow down before we get to the line. So these are your parameters for that. And it's like uh if you were seeding fertilizing, it's just to make sure you overlap or if you were spraying, make sure you cover the area.

[00:21:58]Uh but we're going to ask the tractor to slow down just before the line if we can. And uh that'll be the last little finishing touch.

[00:22:09]But, uh, yeah, it's going to do up and down, up and down. And then we switch to our headland line and it will drive all the way around the headland as well. Job done. But, uh, yeah, it's a bit fiddly setting it up. And, um, it takes some thinking about, but once you get it, it's uh, pretty well, it's pretty straightforward when you sort of know what you're doing, but if you're starting from scratch, they are Yeah, it's a bit of a bugger. Right, there we go. I hope that helps someone. I don't know if it will or not. you know, if there's something you want to add to that, by all means, pitch in. But, um, yeah, we're going to get the rest of these done. Uh, what's everyone doing today? Keith has been out fertilizing grass yesterday. Um, he is I don't know what he's up to today. I think he was washing spinner off. Um, yeah, me and Daisy are on this. Robo's back with his dad and I think we got another day rolling tomorrow. So, we'll see how we go. Anyway, thank you very much for watching. Make sure you like, subscribe, and we'll catch you next time.