Development and runtime environment for embedded controller supporting ISO 11783 standard

ISO 11783 is becoming common to realize communication within a tractor implement system in an agricultural work machine. The ISO network minimally contains at least a tractor, a virtual terminal and a working set, which typically represents a single implement. The virtual terminal is a common device for all implements in the cabin and all the implements may upload their user interface to that. The developing process of an embedded controller that is capable of communicating within the network and use virtual terminal has been found to be challenging due to ISO standard complexity. In order to lower development costs, an objective is to provide development and runtime environment with which is quick and easy to design an embedded controller for agricultural machines. In the paper, this issue is discussed and the paper presents a software integration approach to reach the objective. The main parts of tool chain are PoolEdit (an open source ISO 11783 display editor), Matlab Simulink with C-code generation, and Visual Studio with Windows CE embedded target. The paper describes the tool chain and discusses challenges related to software integration. The paper presents also one machine controller implementation that was made with the presented tool chain, an ISO 11783 related test implement.