Agricultural App Access Sync Across Machines and Offboard Devices
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Agricultural production systems face challenges in integrating access and control of hardware and software assets across onboard computing systems of machines and offboard electronic devices, leading to isolated computing environments and inconsistent user experiences across different devices and machines.
Innovation Solution
A host system that manages user accounts and synchronizes access rights and data between offboard electronic devices and onboard computing systems of agricultural machines, enabling seamless integration and continuity of control, functionality, and user experience through a unified interface and data synchronization.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If separate computing systems are used for onboard machines and offboard devices, then device independence and security are maintained, but integration and consistent user experience deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a host system as an intermediary that mediates between multiple agricultural machines and offboard electronic devices. This host system maintains user accounts, manages access rights, and synchronizes data across all devices, enabling integration without requiring direct connections between machines and devices, thus preserving device independence while achieving system-wide integration.
Solution Approach 2:
The host system provides universal access management functionality that serves multiple agricultural machines and various offboard devices (smartphones, tablets, computers) through a unified platform. This allows different device types to interact with multiple machines using consistent authentication and data synchronization, achieving versatility across the agricultural ecosystem.
2Ease of operation
If unified access management is implemented across all devices and machines, then user experience consistency improves, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges authentication, authorization, and data management functions into a single host system that handles all access requests from multiple devices and machines. By consolidating these functions centrally, the system provides unified user experience consistency while managing complexity through centralized control rather than distributed implementation across each device and machine.
3Loss of information
If data synchronization is implemented between all devices and machines, then information consistency improves, but communication overhead and processing time increase
Solution Approach 1:
The host system acts as a central intermediary for data synchronization, receiving data from agricultural machines and distributing it to authorized offboard devices, while also collecting data from devices and making it available to machines. This centralized mediation ensures data consistency across all participants while reducing the need for direct peer-to-peer communication, thereby minimizing communication overhead and synchronization time.
Data Source
AI summary
A host system maintains a plurality of user accounts each including offboard electronic device information and agricultural machine information specific to a user. The host system receives requests for user access, determines whether the source of the request is an offboard electronic device or an onboard computing system of an agricultural machine, determines whether the user has access rights to the device or system, and identifies any apps authorized for use by the user and the device or system. The host system synchronizes application data and settings between the device or system and the user's account so that when the user runs related apps from any device or machine the app data and the settings will be reflected. When a user purchases an application for a device or machine the same or related applications automatically become available on other devices or systems that are managed by the host system.