Using AgLeader SMS Software for yield data analysis; Step-by-step guide

Transcription

1 Using AgLeader SMS Software for yield data analysis; Step-by-step guide Prepared by:

2 This guide is based on AgLeader SMS version For help and details regarding registration, see Only certain parts of the software have been selected here as an introduction to the functionality of the software. AgLeader offer two levels of software, SMS Basic and SMS Advanced. Only SMS Basic is described in these notes. Getting started On opening the software, you will see Read File(s) button at the top left corner. There will be 3 options available. For importing yield data you will need to select the top option, and then press Start Reading Field Display Files 1 2

3 You will then be asked to pick the manufacturer and file format. You can also select the option to automatically search a folder or directory, then select start automatic file search, and then select the folder to search. This option is the best due to the rapidly changing file affiliations, unless you definitely know the monitor brand and file formats. 1 2

4 Once the software has identified the data, it appears in the following screen. You can then Edit these, adding or removing files as necessary. You can select to Batch process files under the File processing options, however this is generally only necessary if you want to modify the processing settings. If you wish to modify the processing settings, you will need to tick off the Auto-create management items and skip processing settings button. Click start processing selected files when you are ready to conitinue.

5 You can edit the processing settings. You may have selected to skip the processing settings, thereby allowing the software to use the values from the monitor as it was set up. Unless you know of particular issues with the data, it is best to leave these as the set values, as settings are brought across from the monitor data. The following screen shows some of these settings. The weight to volume calculation comes from calibration settings and should be left as is. The dry moisture setting is used to adjust the higher moisture contents. If there is an error with the swath width, then this can be changed, and the data will reflect the change. You also need to tick on the use manual swath box. Ifyou want to modify the dry moisture it can also be done here. Again tick on the use manual moisture box. The delay settings are important for stopping and starting to allow the machine to start properly recording and capture data at the end. The flow shift is the shift in the data, in this case time, that is required to attempt to predict the time taken for the bulk of the data to reach the monitor. If you are seeing a saw toothing effect, then the flow shift setting may need to be adjusted. This is particularly important for on-farm trials that run perpendicular to the direction of harvest. The filter settings do a simple clip or filter of the data to remove erroneous points before further analysis. In the past, we have seen a lot of data being removed in very low yielding crops where this min yield mass setting has been set too high.

6 The next screen with ask for Grower name and farm name. If you are doing this for a client you have processed in the past, then the software will automatically detect this. Click OK to continue.

7 Once all the available data has been processed, (may take some time depending on the number of files) a directory tree appears. The directory tree uses a common standard in the industry of: Summary information about the crop can be seen here, as well as important information about the original files.

8 By right clicking on the layer you can see that a number of options appear. The most important items here are: 1. Trace boundary is used if you want the software to automatically draw around your field points to create a polygon. 2. Reprocess data is used if there are serious problems with the dataset, or the data filters need to be changed, as described above. 3. Export is used to convert the data or paddock boundary to a common format for use in other software programs.

9 This is what the boundary looks like ( A ). This will only appear when you click on the year label ( B ). If you wish to export this boundary, then it will need to be visible. Rick click, and press export. You need to be aware that this traced boundary ( A ) only represents the data collected in that year, and therefore may not represent the true field boundary. B A

10 To export the data or traced paddock boundary, the export setting is used. This can be access from right clicking on the data or from the top menu. To export the data points the data point layer needs to be visible. Then right click, and export. The following screen appears. Select the generic data format you require. Comma delimited text is useful for exporting to excel for further analysis Map info is for mapinfo software users Shape is for ESRI ArcGIS users Tab delimited can also be brought into excel You will then be asked for a location to save the data into.

11 If you wish to export the field boundary, then it needs to be visible. Right click, export. The following screen will appear. You will notice the export format list has grown extensively. This allows you to create paddock boundary files for a wide range of monitors or into a generic format as above.

12 If you wish to modify the colours and legends of the data, then you need to create new map ( A ). The data will be displayed in the full version or during the trial period only. To modify the colours and legend items click on the button shown below as B. B A

13 Often you will wish to know the location of data points or other references in the map. You will notice below the lat/long coordinates (in decimal degrees) at the bottom right corner of the screen. The defaulted value is whatever the first dataset you imported was, unless you have specified in the grower setup page prior to importing any data. In this example it is WGS84 which is the format that all GPS systems collect data in. If your GPS has been set to the same datum and projection, then you will be able to directly correlate with the map. You can also place your pointer over the top of any point and get the details of that data (shown below).

14 Reporting is a useful function to summarise information from the farm. Select the New General Report tab from the top toolbar. The following dialogue box appears. Depending on the required data, select the most appropriate report format.

15 Below is the output of a field summary report. This can be saved by right clicking and saving as HTML for future use or delivery to the grower.

16 To select data for further analysis, you can use the select buttons when the map is open (shown below). If you want to select data out manually, you can simply choose the select polygon n function. If you know the pass number of a trial strip for example you can also select on that. Or alternatively you may select on load using select via filter function.

17 Once the data has been selected, you can then do a query on the data, using the query button. The information about this selection is then listed below. By doing another selection, and another query, you can compare the two selections at the bottom of the page and export this as a HTML file for later use (right click on the query results, and click Save As HTML). Statistics on the data are shown in the query box, or the HTML file.