Systems for monitoring seeds and methods thereof

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9867328-B2
Application number	US-201614991210-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jan 8, 2016
Priority date	Jan 8, 2016
Publication date	Jan 16, 2018
Grant date	Jan 16, 2018

Abstract

At least one example embodiment discloses a seed monitoring system including a light source configured to emit light in an interior of a seed tube, a plurality of light receivers, each of the plurality of light receivers configured to receive light in at least two sectors of a plurality of sectors of a plane in the interior of the seed tube and generate a sensing signal corresponding to the received light, a processing system including a plurality of conditioning channels, the processing system configured to process the sensing signals to generate conditioned signals and a controller configured to generate a seed count value based on the generated conditioned signals.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A seed monitoring system comprising:
a light source configured to emit light along a plane of an interior of a seed tube;
a light receiver configured to receive the light and generate a sensing signal corresponding to the received light, the light receiver opposing the light source on the plane of the interior of the seed tube;
a processing system including a plurality of conditioning channels, the processing system configured to process the sensing signal using at least a selected one of the plurality of conditioning channels to generate a first conditioned signal; and
a controller configured to generate a seed count value based on the first conditioned signal, wherein each of the plurality of conditioning channels includes a filter and each of the plurality of conditioning channels has a selected gain and a selected bandwidth corresponding to at least one of a seed size range, a seed velocity and a probability of overlapping seeds.

2. The seed monitoring system of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of conditioning channels are connected to a common input and have a plurality of outputs, respectively, and the outputs are coupled to the controller.

3. The seed monitoring system of claim 2 , wherein the processing system further includes a preamplifier configured to amplify the sensing signal and output an amplified sensing signal to the common input.

Assignees

• Deere & Co

Inventors

• Tevs Nikolai
• Puhalla Jeffrey S
• Garner Elijah B

Classifications

• A01C7/102 Primary

  Regulating or controlling the seed rate · CPC title

• A01C7/206

  Seed pipes · CPC title

• G06M1/272 Primary

  using photoelectric means · CPC title

• G01V8/20

  using multiple transmitters or receivers · CPC title

• G06M1/101

  by electro-optical means · CPC title