Thomas Tømte
I'm an electrical engineer with a master's degree, and in my day job I work as a field engineer on autonomous underwater drones. Troubleshooting GPS and other navigation systems, advanced sensors and mechanical parts are just some of the things I deal with. Part-time hobby farmer. In general, I have a bigger-than-average interest in anything electrical, especially things that can steer themselves, whether it's a smart home or a tractor.
A few years ago, my dad and I took over running the family farm’s 57 acres of land, after it had been leased out for a long time. Just a few hours into my first spring season, behind the wheel of the red 2008 Case, I was surprised at how exhausting it was. I constantly had to keep my eyes on a point on the horizon to hold a straight line, while also keeping an eye behind me on the harrow. My dad had, after all, been very particular about planning well and driving dead-straight lines – otherwise, what would the neighbors think of us? That we’d been driving drunk? I was glad it wasn’t the seed drill I had hitched behind the tractor, I thought, as I watched the neighbors drive past the field giving me long looks.
A few days later, as barley was being sown in the soil, an idea was sown in me – one that would later become this website. How hard could it really be to get a tractor to steer itself? My car, which after all drives at over 100 km/h on busy roads, manages it. Not only can it steer itself, it also keeps a safe distance, sees other cars and pedestrians, and can parallel park on its own. Surely something similar should be easy for a lonely tractor in a huge field.
I started googling, and sure enough, of course others had thought exactly the same thing – almost 30 years before me. The rabbit hole got deeper the more I searched, and the jargon came pouring in: “RTK”, “IMU”, “SBAS”, “DGPS”, “NTRIP” and other terms I thought only people working with GPS systems every day understood. I found several possible retrofit autosteer solutions. Most of them seemed to offer exactly the same thing, but the information on their websites was patchy at best. How was it actually installed, what did I need, how did it work, and how did I use it? And not least: what did it cost?? Hardly any of the suppliers could give me a price on the spot. “Contact us for pricing”, “Contact us for a quote”, “Price on request”. It’s 2026 – surely you shouldn’t need to send a carrier pigeon to find out what might be the most important thing about your product?
I did as I was told and contacted five or six suppliers to ask for a price. The idea of autosteer on the old Case died about as fast as I could open the quotes in my inbox. From NOK 60,000 and well up from there, excluding VAT. A price that would never pay for itself on a farm with only 57 acres of grain, no matter how much more comfortable it would be. For what is in practice just a GPS receiver, a microcontroller and a small electric motor turning the steering wheel, the price seemed a bit steep to me. GPS equipment isn’t exactly cutting-edge military technology anymore, and microcontrollers are more accessible than ever. The electric motor has been around since the 1800s. I’m exaggerating, of course – I understand that it takes time and money to develop stable software to control it all, but still …
With the idea of my own autosteer pushed well to the back of my mind, I nevertheless came across an English-language forum discussing how you could build your own autosteer system for just a fraction of the price. AgOpenGPS. Enthusiastic forum members happily shared their own builds, and a whole community of helpful farmers in the same boat (or tractor) revealed itself. And the best part: the software was free. All the parts you needed were readily available from various online stores around Europe, and anyone could buy them.
A couple of months later, I was sitting behind the wheel of the red Case. With my hands in my lap. Not on the wheel. The tractor was steering itself! It had been two months of hunting for parts, head-scratching, soldering, troubleshooting, 3D printing and swearing. The total came to almost exactly NOK 20,000 including VAT, if you don’t count a few wrong orders. Even with those, it cost me far less than buying a ready-made system from a supplier. And no, my homemade system might not look as polished as one costing well over twice as much, but it works, it can be repaired, and I can customize it however I like. That’s what matters.
AgOpenGPS is first and foremost free software for autosteering farm machinery, but it’s just as much a global community of farmers who want more affordable precision farming equipment. This community project shares build guides, tips and tricks, and help with troubleshooting, calibrating and installing the system. The biggest challenge I faced when building my system wasn’t necessarily a lack of information, but that the information is scattered all over the place. Deep in various forums, on websites in languages I don’t understand, and in countless YouTube videos with so few views that they barely show up in search results. It’s hard to know where to even start.
That’s exactly where I hope diyAutoSteer can help. My goal is to gather all this information in one clear, organized place, so that anyone – not just people with a computer or electronics background – can build their own autosteer for a fraction of what the big suppliers charge for the same thing. And if you don’t have the time or the inclination to build it yourself, I offer ready-built solutions that you install and set up yourself, with plenty of help all the way from ordering until you’re sitting there with your hands in your lap.