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Comment by kube-system | Hacker News Reader

Already too late. Farmers already use quite a bit of connected technology in the field. Modern high-output farming and the cheap food we have really wouldn't be possible without it.

e.g. https://www.smh.com.au/national/farmers-crippled-by-satellit...

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That is fine and great. But there is a big difference between a farmer who has a system to, lets say set time for watering and can control, repair (the pipping for that system is run of the mill PVC and they can source parts from suppliers for other parts of the system), and operate each set of equipment without it needing to reach out to some company's API, but another piece of equipment the won't work if it can't phone home and proprietary parts that can't be gotten from a supplier.

Supplier lock-in is definitely a concern I agree with. But many modern farms do make a fair use of external data that does inherently require an external connection.

And I think that is fine so long as it no longer becomes a requirement of the standard function of the equipment. I should be able to buy a tractor and use it as a tractor with a reduced feature set that doesn't rely on external systems, but it can still accomplish the base set of features a tractor needs, even if not optimal. And the parts the require external data are opt-in and not required for basic functionality. Which is the fear. You bought the tractor or piece of equipment, but it is useless without also all the other subscriptions.

Taking the sprinkler. I make a sprinkler system. You buy the system and can work with with your own local manual settings, no extra fees, no external communication required. But you can pay me a, lets say $15/month subscription and I will control it using AI/ML and historical data to try to control it in a way to maximize it's use and output. I think that is fine so long as your allowed to cancel the subscription and set your own basic settings and it can operate. And most parts are easily sourced and replaceable.

> And I think that is fine so long as it no longer becomes a requirement of the standard function of the equipment.

Sometimes it is, not arbitrarily, but as a matter of how the technology works. For example, the link I posted above.

Yes, those tractors can be manually driven like a 1980's farm tractor without guidance, but that's kind of impractical because profitably operating a farm often depends on those features.

connected is fine, gps is fine, but that is all separate from not letting you work on your own equipment.

GPS is ideally quite redundant, and the data from it is usable without an internet connection. GPS is fine.

Civilian GPS is not accurate enough for precision farming which is why these tractor manufacturers in my above link were using Inmarsat L-band to transmit correction information in addition to using GPS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarFire_(navigation_system)

I'm even less worried about the security of military GPS.

I don't know what that has to do with this topic. Starfire (and similar) farm tractor guidance systems are not that. Zero farm tractors use military GPS.

It can also be done locally with a fixed base station.

I imagine a mostly autonomous land vehicle relying on GPS would also require RTK GPS, which does require an external source of the data. Some GPS receivers can receive that from satellites, but the data is encrypted and requires expensive commercial licenses or military grade equipment.

You can generate your own correction data for GPS, using a fixed base station, and relaying the data over a radio link or through the cell network. Look up ArduSimple if interested how. Something like $400 IIRC (for the base station).

Source: we are doing it, using AgOpenGPS (OSS autosteer) with RTK

Oh I know. I've plumbed RTCM3 streams over radios and cell networks aplenty as well. There's a real cost to setting up and maintaining a base station properly, though. Subscribing to a service is attractive if you're only operating a small fleet, which is sort of the point?

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