Development of grain yield monitoring system based on CAN bus technology

It depended on the spatial and temporal variation of soil and grain yield to implement precision agriculture.Grain yield monitoring on combine harvester was a cornerstone of precision fertilization.The intelligent grain yield monitoring system with the sensors and DGPS (differential global positioning system), which was loaded on the combine harvester, could get the different blocks’ yield and produce the yield map.In this study, a new grain yield monitoring system based on CAN bus technology was developed.The system consisted of sensor unit, data acquisition unit, GPS module and LCD (liquid crystal display) terminal.The grain yield data were collected by the grain flow sensor, and processed by the signal condition circuit.And then the grain yield data and GPS signal were transmitted to the control unit by CAN bus.With the algorithm of grain yield conversion, all the collected data including real-time grain yield, harvest area and average grain yield were displayed on the LCD terminal.Flow sensor unit included grain yield flow sensor, force impact plate and mounting bracket.The sensor frame was mounted at the top of clean grain elevator of combine harvester.When the elevator paddles rotated around the sprocket, grain was propelled towards a flat impact plate.As grain momentum was lost in the subsequent collision with the impact plate, an effective force was measured by the impact parallel-beam load cell.Along with the calibration relationship between measured force and mass flow rate, the output of the impact parallel-beam load cell could indicate the flow rate of grain yield.Data acquisition unit included power conversion circuit, sensor signal acquisition circuit, analog-to-digital conversion circuit and CAN communication circuit.It could fulfill data acquisition function, CAN communication function and interrupt handling function.LCD terminal had the function of sensor detection, the function of GPS information collection, parameter calibration, data display and storage.It could display the real-time grain yield, total yield, average yield and harvest area.In order to evaluate the grain yield monitoring system, 3 experiments which included static performance experiment of grain yield flow sensor, platform test experiment of grain yield monitoring system and dynamic performance experiment on combine harvester were carried out.The result of platform test experiment showed that the system error between predicted yield and measured yield was less than 3% and the system could avoid the effect of vibration from the platform effectively.Field dynamic experiment showed that the system error was less than 5%.Both the experimental results indicated that the grain yield monitoring system could satisfy the need of practical production.