The dealer wants five figures to make my tractor steer straight
The hardware in that quote is commodity. What costs five figures is the integration and the permission — and both have an open-source answer that has been running on tens of thousands of machines for a decade. Before you decide anything, make the quote show you its own arithmetic: at twenty acres, the yearly correction subscription alone is usually worth more than all the overlap it saves.
What actually works
$1,000–1,300 in parts against $5,000–18,000 installed, holding inside an inch, with no subscription and no unlock that stays with the dealer when you sell the tractor.
$1,000–1,300 in parts~$300 once replaces the $600-a-year correction signal. It pays for itself in the seventh month.
~$300, onceAbout twenty states give the correction stream away — check yours first, but read who it's actually for.
Free, if you qualifyIn writing. On many systems the unlock stays with the dealer, which quietly means you are buying it for one machine and leaving it behind. A build you own has nothing to ask permission from.
Run the numbers
- Autosteer: dealer quote vs. built yourself → — free calculator, works offline.
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