Agritech Machinery

How does an agricultural machinery control retrofit engagement work?

We do the control and connectivity engineering inside agricultural machinery.

This is for the OEMs whose machines they are. You keep the machine, the brand and the dealer network; we take the parts that need a standing specialism:

• the machine-end connector that carries a working machine’s data to a remote-service platform
• control retrofits that move a machine off an obsolete or closed platform onto one the OEM can keep maintaining
• telemetry that survives an intermittent link, and the fleet view a builder can turn into a service offering
• CAN-based machine and implement interfaces, ISO 11783 ISOBUS and SAE J1939, bridged to the modern control and data layer
• purpose-built control nodes and telemetry gateways, developed from board bring-up and stack port upward
• training your engineers on the platform, building the first implementation with them, then third-line support behind their first line

We do not build machines and we do not sell a telemetry product. Where a design has to be integrated and tested, our team works with your engineers, onshore during integration and test and remotely for the rest. The engagement page sets out the modes and how they are priced.

Why does a controller replacement pull telemetry and compliance with it?

Obsolescence, telemetry and compliance share one root: a machine that outlives the electronics inside it.

Builders in this sector rarely have a control problem specific to agriculture. They have a controller that went end of life two supplier generations ago, a machine that disappears the moment it leaves the yard, and a compliance date approaching. The answer to all three is the same, a control platform the OEM can still open in five years, which is why they are cheaper to answer at once than one at a time. That is why a retrofit and a telemetry project usually want to be the same project. The moment the control platform is being touched is the cheapest moment to add the data path and the secure update mechanism the Cyber Resilience Act will ask for, and the most expensive version of both is the one retrofitted onto a fleet that has already shipped.

Which slices of the work can you support?

Any part that is going obsolete or is yet to go live: the controller, the data path, the bus interface.

• An end-of-life controller. A machine still selling on a part that cannot be bought, assessed before anything is redesigned.
• Reporting from the field. The machine-end data path to a remote-service or fleet platform, designed around an intermittent link.
• An implement interface. J1939 or ISOBUS node-level work, bridged to whatever the control and data layer above it has become.
• A closed platform migration. Control moved onto an open controller and toolchain, or the proprietary part isolated behind an interface so it can be replaced later.
• A device to build. A purpose-built control node or telemetry gateway, built from board bring-up upward.
• Team bring-up. Your own engineers brought up to speed. Training, then building the first implementation alongside your team, with third-line support behind them.

How does a working machine reach a remote-service platform?

A connector in the machine speaks to both ends, the machine bus and the remote platform.

The typical shape is a platform vendor assembling remote connection, remote debugging, fault resolution and remote operation for complex machines, which is then sold to the OEMs who build them. The machine’s control data is exposed over OPC UA; the platform ingests over MQTT; and the join between the two is the part that has to be engineered. Our team built exactly that piece. At the time nothing joined the two sides: no companion specification, no reference implementation, and standards on both sides written for a plant floor with a fixed network rather than for a machine on an intermittent cellular link.

What would the CAN and ISOBUS side involve?

The job is getting a protocol running correctly on a specific device, as a node on a third-party network.

That is the whole job:

• The stack has to fit the part.
• The timing has to hold under real bus load.
• The device has to behave on a busy network as well as on the bench.

ISOBUS (ISO 11783) is built on SAE J1939, so a J1939 node is the same work with a different application layer above it. As an example, our team has delivered CAN bus integration on farm and load-vehicle electronics, and SAE-level control integration on marine systems. The node-level discipline transfers across any of these networks; what changes is the application layer above it. Where a programme needs ISOBUS certification or Task Controller job data, the boundaries should be set early. Both are answered in the FAQ below.

How do you design telemetry around intermittent coverage?

We design around the gaps, so a machine out of coverage still produces a complete record.

Coverage is intermittent, power is the machine’s own, and the environment is dust, vibration and temperature swing, so buffering becomes the design centre: the edge device records the machine’s data continuously and reconciles when a link appears, rather than sampling only while connected. Anything that assumes a live connection produces a fleet view with holes in it exactly where the interesting failures happened.

What is your approach to choosing a serviceable control platform?

We move control onto platforms with a documented supply horizon and an open toolchain.

The target matters more than the retrofit, so that is where we spend the assessment. It means the next revision is an engineering task the OEM can schedule, not a search for a discontinued part. Where a proprietary controller has to stay for now, we isolate it behind an interface so replacing it later is a contained change instead of a second migration.

What does connecting a machine add to the compliance picture?

A machine that carries data off itself becomes a product with digital elements, so the CRA applies.

That pulls the EU Cyber Resilience Act’s obligations onto it alongside existing CE marking:

• Secure update paths.
• Vulnerability handling.
• A documented software bill of materials.

We build that in at the platform level while the control work is happening, because retrofitting a secure update mechanism onto a shipped fleet costs considerably more.

What does the Cyber Resilience Act mean for a machine builder?

It sets two fixed dates, and the decisions that meet them are taken years earlier.

Regulation (EU) 2024/2847 has applied vulnerability and incident reporting duties since 11 September 2026, with full enforcement on 11 December 2027, and it covers products with digital elements sold into the EU. For agricultural machinery that increasingly means the telemetry unit and the controller, not just the cab display, and the secure-update, SBOM and vulnerability-handling design behind them.

The practical requirements land in engineering decisions made years earlier: whether the machine can take a secure update in the field, whether anyone knows which software components are inside it, and whether its firmware can still be rebuilt when a vulnerability report arrives. An open, serviceable platform makes that answerable. A closed controller from a supplier who no longer sells or supports that product generally does not.