How does John Deere tractors know that they are broken and lock themselves ?
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they have a central computer and a bunch of sensors, in the engine, in transmission, maybe elsewhere. Similar to warning lights in a car (Check engine, low tire pressure, low brake fluid, low oil, etc.)
If any sensor stops reporting “normal” readings, central computer check if the sensor is on the “critical” list and if so, locks up the tractor.
I don’t believe this is exactly the case. With a lot of modern cars and things, when something goes wrong you can connect a device that will read out an error code. For example my truck throws a 111 code a lot, and when I look this up I can see that it means my truck detected that the engine didn’t heat up to the proper temperature in the right amount of time. So now I know the issue and how to fix it. I believe John deer simply locked farmers out of that feature. So farmers aren’t able to see what the issue being specified is, and then can’t properly fix it.
Farm equipment has a lot of different sensors measuring things all the time. Some of these are inside the engine. If the sensors start sending bad data it will usually warn you. The sensors could get an odd reading, or sometimes the sensors just wear out over time. Like pressure sensors, temperature, position sensors to keep track of the crankshaft rotation, etc.
Idk about modern ones, but traditionally they were just small little replaceable sensors connected to wires that must be switched every once in a while kinda like a lightbulb.
Keep in mind that even old farm equipment had a lot of sensors everywhere, especially on combines, but they were arguably easier to replace because the software was simple.
It’s similar to a car with the sensors that make your dash light up and give you warning codes or check engine lights, just more complicated with more stuff going on. It’s not limited to tractors, modern cars are also really bad for the same reasons, but it’s more blatant with farm equipment because it’s more complicated and people are more likely to be in a sotuation where they want to try and fix things themselves.
Modern tractors are mostly driven using a computer interface that shows the current gearing and whatnot, so if the computer isn’t working, basically nothing works, you need the computer to be running properly. The computer is not like an optional thing anymore really, it turns on when you turn the engine on, and you can’t really do anything until it is working, on the models I’ve used you can’t even change gears without it.
I’m not very experienced and especially not with JD, and I’ve never had anything completely lock me out, but usually the computers just give you annoying warning popups and stuff kinda like using Microsoft Windows when you get a popup about an update or whatever. If the warning is minor, it shouldn’t usually lock the driver out, you can usually just ignore the warnings, similar to ignoring a check engine light, but sometimes, if it’s bad, it could prevent you from operating.
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