Producers are always looking for ways to lower their input costs, and that certainly applies to precision farm equipment. At the recent 2014 Develop with Deere conference in Kansas City, Travis Jones with LHP Telematics, a company partially owned by John Deere, told Chuck that the biggest limitation to telematics is the cost of the hardware.
“The boxes just cost too stinkin’ much money!” he said, adding that while volume has and will continue to drop prices, there’s just no way around it. “That is the biggest issue with telematics.”
Travis said another big issue is knowing how to hook up all the wires and make all the devices work together smoothly.
“There are no OEMs out there that say ‘Here is the specification of where you hook up power-ground-ignition to get some of this data,’ and as soon as you go to an after-market installation, that’s where you get the biggest issues. When you go to an owner of an expensive piece of equipment and say, ‘Hey, I need to cut into this wire here,’ they usually don’t like that,” he said.
Travis said the biggest takeaway from the Develop with Deere conference is all the connections they’re able to make to have better integrations of equipment and knowledge.
You can hear Chuck’s interview with Travis here: [wpaudio url=”http://www.zimmcomm.biz/john-deere/jd-develop-14-jones.mp3″ text=”Travis Jones, LHP Telematics”]