New High-tech agricultural machinery is a nightmare for farmers

A corn farmer central Illinois, on top of your combine, is silhouetted against the setting sun in Pleasant Plains, Illinois on September 27, 2014. Seth Perlman / AP

I crouched on the ground and took stock of my inadequate tools. Over my left shoulder a huge tractor John Deere rose. I came here to fix the tractor. So far, things were not going as planned.

I am a computer programmer by profession, and a technician by profession. Ten years ago, I began to iFixit, an online community, DIY teaches people to repair what they have. The repair is what I do, and was being rejected by a tractor was incredibly frustrating.

Kyle Wiens is the co-founder and CEO of iFixit, a retailer community service and parts online internationally renowned for its repair manuals open source and disassembly of products.

I threw my keys and screwdrivers. Conventional tools of my trade had no power here. This work called for something different. Armed with wire, alligator clips, a handful of connectors and CANbus reader, I jumped back into the cab of the tractor. Once more unto the breach, dear friends!

The family farmer who owns this tractor is a friend of mine. He just wanted a better way to fix a minor hydraulic sensor. Whenever the sensor blew, the onboard computer would shut the tractor down. Technician at least two days is required to order the part, go to the farm and change the sensor. So for two days, Dave tractor is fallow. And so do their fields.

Dave asked me if there was any way to circumvent a rear sensor waiting for the technician to appear. But the problem of fixing Dave sensor requires tinkering in the engine control unit of the tractor system very own computer tractor (TECU): the brains behind agricultural beast.

An hour later, I climbed back out of the tractor cab. Defeated. I was unable to break the wall of defenses that protected the Tecú property as a fortress. I could not even connect to the computer. Because John Deere says I can not.

Dave is a DIY kind of guy. But David would like to do more than change the oil in your tractor. He would like to be able to modify the distribution of motor. He would like to collect the information it collects his tractor to learn more about how to grow their crops. He would like to fix the error codes. Above all, you would be able to repair your computer itself, because it is what he has been doing all his life.

In the technology industry, we tend to speak of the Maker Movement explode like tinkering is something new. In fact, it is as old as the earth farmers have been doing, construct, reconstruct, piracy, and playing with his computer because chickens were wild. I have seen that farmers do with rusted combine harvester and old welders do modern manufacturers with Raspberry Pis and paneras. There is even a magazine crowdsourced, Farm Show, that is cataloged thousands of intelligent agricultural inventions in the last three decades.

Of course, the world is changing, and that's especially true in the world of agriculture. Most problems can not be solved with duct tape and baling wire more.

 The regulations are stricter, agribusiness is more consolidated, resources are scarce, and the team is infinitely more complicated and owner. Small family farmers like Dave's face challenges even the most industrious manufacturers find it difficult to "hack".

What used to be done by hand now managed to scale the giant machine. And that equipment is expensive, equivalent to the price of a small house (mid-distance tractor Dave is worth $ 100,000). The new systems, computer processed afford the kind of precision and predictability that farmers 20 years ago could not have imagined. But they have also introduced new problems.

Apart from its use, not much you can do with modern ag equipment. When it breaks or maintenance needs, farmers rely on distributors and technicians manufacturers a hard pill to swallow for farmers, who have been maintaining their own equipment because the plow.

"[The DIY repair] is cheaper than calling out the technical But that information is not only out there." David explained.

The cost and hassle of repairing modern tractors has soured many farmers in the computer systems of all. In a September issue of Farm Journal, Farm auction expert Greg Peterson noted that demand for new tractors was falling. Tellingly, the price and demand for antique tractor (without all the bells and whistles digital) has collected. "In terms of simplicity, we've all heard the talk," wrote Pete Machinery. "There are a growing number of farmers increased value in the acquisition of simpler older machines that do not require a computer to solve."

The problem is that farmers are essentially driving around a giant black box equipped with shovels harvest. Only manufacturers have keys to the boxes. Different connectors from one brand to another are needed, sometimes even from one model to another, just to talk to the TECU. Modifications and troubleshooting diagnostic software require that farmers can not have. Even if a farmer managed to get the right software, calibrations to TECU sometimes require a password from the factory. No password, no changes, without the consent of the manufacturer.

John Deere, in particular, has been very effective in limiting access to their diagnostic software. That's why I would not have been able to adjust programming tractor Dave, even if I had been able to hack together the correct interface. John Deere does not want me to. The game by dealer repair is too lucrative for manufacturers to cede any control back to the farmers.

After a second swear words that induce attempt monkey around in the computer code that fuels Dave, I began to wonder how other farmers were dealing with the increasingly involved and proprietary nature of modern agriculture.

My failure with the tractor Dave has me excited. I started lurking on forums ag, farmers talking to my friends, and spending time in diesel repair shops. I learned that farmers are not taking the lying limitations. There is a thriving gray market for diagnostic equipment and proprietary connectors. Some farmers have even managed to get their hands on the software they need to recalibrate and repair the system yourself, laptop purchased from a friend-of-un-unnamed friend with the software already installed on it. There are even ways to avoid default passwords to block access to TECU for repairs.

But under modern copyright laws, this type of "repair" is legally questionable.

Manufacturers have every legal right to put a password or encryption on the TECU. The owners, however, have no legal right to break the digital lock through their own equipment. The Act-a law Digital Millennium Copyright copyright 1998 designed to prevent digital piracy classified break a technology protection measure on programming a device as a violation of copyright. Therefore, it is quite possible that changing the engine timing in their own tractor makes a farmer a criminal.

Instead of struggling with proprietary systems, other farmers are starting to go open source. Dorn Cox has been working the land most of his life. After a break to work in tech start-ups, took charge of a farm of 250 acres in Lee, New Hampshire. In 2010, he co-founded Farm Hack, an online community of farmers, designers, developers and engineers "to help our community of farmers to be better inventors, the development of tools that fit the scale and ethics our family farms sustainable. "

Farm Hack So is it free. Together, members are building a library of open source tools and agricultural knowledge. They hack together solutions that work for them. Projects range from the classic low-tech (a farm bike that allows users to choose the terrestrial crops like strawberries without destroying the back) to the decidedly tech-savvy (a, monitor compost Arduino motor with remote control) .

Unfortunately, when it comes to modifying existing equipment-as Dave tractor is the very idea of property that is more disputed. David paid for the tractor; owns what is tangible: the wheels, chassis metal, gears and pistons in the engine. But John Deere has everything else: the programming that drives the tractor, the software calibrates the engine, the information needed to fix it. So who really owns this tractor?

Even if I could, would it be legal Dave fix your machine? At this time, we do not know; and that ambiguity is worrying. Therefore, we are trying to find the answer. In conjunction with the USC and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, we have requested an exemption from the DMCA for farmers who want to modify and repair your computer. Let's find out if it is legal for farmers to tinker with their own equipment when the Copyright Office reviews the latest round of exemptions.

Until then, Dave tractor remains a closed box and neither David nor I are allowed to open.

Want to speak in support of this exemption DMCA? Tell the Copyright Officethat farmers should be able to repair and modify their own machinery. You have until February 6 to make their voices heard.