Project Statement

Currently the John Deere API can serve some maintenance information on their tractors from their servers that has been downloaded from the tractors connection in the field. However, a farmer in the field may not have connection to cellular or wireless service; this application is intended to fill that gap by connecting directly the the tractor via wireless to a device on board the tractor.

We propose a smartphone app for a farmer to review the status of his machines via a touch screen interface. Such an app would allow for farmers to interact with their vehicles to know the fuel levels and other important information about their vehicle. If this app is brought to completion it could be expanded to go cross platform and have other utilities as well.

Our primary customer is John Deere and their clients and employees. It would be targeted to three main users farmers, dealers, and developers. Given the app works on one platform of smartphone , we would focus on making the app mutli-platform to reach the maximum amount of people.

What Value Does the Project Offers

This application is aimed at providing the owners of John Deere tractors with an easy to access resource for checking the status of their vehicles. It will allow the owners of the tractors to quickly look up maintenance information, location, vehicle identification, and other miscellaneous data on the tractor. Using image recognition software and Augmented Reality libraries the process should provide a simple point-and-shoot style of look up to make operation easy for tractor owners.

Developers will find use in the applications ‘Developer Mode’ which will allow a developer to connect directly with the tractor in order to communicate important status information. The developer would then be able to perform administrative and debugging tasks such as download log files.

Vehicle dealers are intended to benefit from having a convenient method to look up, sort, get alerts, and quickly display information about vehicles they have registered. This application will allow them to manage their vehicles remotely and stay up to date on their condition at all times.

Is this Project Feasible

This project is entirely feasible to complete given the resources and timeline available. Much of the required data is available through John Deere’s developer API and the constant connection with their tractors. Our team will not have to make any changes in hardware and will be focussed primarily on communication with the API data provider and tractor internals. Modern mobile applications are powerful and many resources are available to support developers; the development community for our primary development platform (Apple iOS) is large and experienced and will provide a solid foundation to build this application.