Calibrating the agricultural spreader has become an easy and fast task for farmers that own Stara agricultural machines. Thanks to the Stara Spreading application, the farmer can optimize the adjustment of the vanes, do profile tests, and assess the quality of the inputs on the smartphone.
Innovative and practical, the application was developed by Stara to ensure maximum excellence and precision for crop field applications. The platform reinforces the Stara innovation DNA and the constant seeking for new agricultural technologies that provide easy and efficient operations in the field.
Having more than 10 thousand users, the technology is in constant evolution and receives frequent updates. The upgrades and new functions are designed by the Product Engineering team of the company, their expertise and farmers’ feedback.
In this article, you’re going to see the main functions of the application, get to know the reasons that encourage its creation, understand how it speeds up the agricultural spreader calibration, and comprehend the advantages to use this type of technology in agriculture.
Stara Spreading Application: test of sample quality
The first version of the Stara Spreading application was created in 2019. Since then, the tool has been upgraded in order to provide the farmer with new functions.
The application is exclusive for Stara broadcast spreaders, including the trailed ones, such as Twister 1500 and Hércules 24000, and the self-propelled machines as Hércules 6.0. In addition to optimize the calibration process of the agricultural machine, the technology helps the farmer to assess the quality of fertilisers to be applied in the field.
In order to provide more practicality, the most common products used in the fields are pre-registered in the application so that the farmer can fill out the form quickly, speeding up the operation. Thus, the farmer only needs to select the input in a list and start the tests. If the product isn’t registered yet, just click on the “Other” button and enter the data.
The product quality test is the most recent update of the application, carried out in 2024. By means of the new function, when the farmers enter the sample data, the application indicates what is the weight variation among them, entering the product density.
The Stara product software engineer, Willian Brun, one of the people in charge for the application development, explains about the agricultural spreader calibration:
“The calibration can be performed periodically, as the farmer wishes, or when replacing the product or application. Every product has its own particularities of density and granulometry, which causes a variation in the application range and how the product falls on the vane. For this reason, it is recommended that every product change or application type, the calibration should be performed again, adjusting the machine according to that product requirements.” Willian Brun, Stara product software engineer
Why was the application created for the Stara spreader?
The Stara Spreading application was developed by the Stara Product Engineering area in order to speed up the calibration of the agricultural spreader vanes and reduce the product waste.
According to Brun, by using the technology, both challenges were solved. Thus, two passes in the crop field are needed to do the tests and the farmer can adjust the spreader properly, and the machine being ready to start operations.
“The application recommends, first, a default calibration. Thus, the operator starts from a known point, performs a single application, collects the profile test and enter the application data, as it displays exactly how it should position the vanes. Therefore, the agricultural machines are calibrated already.” Willian Brun, Stara product software engineer
According to the engineer, the application also delivers uniform spreading all over the application range, regardless of the input type, either solid or powdered.
Before, without the application help, the farmer needed to pass in the field plenty of times, spreading input and collecting samples to make sure the coefficient of variation was correct. Now, two passes are necessary.
Brun says that this operation would cause product waste every time the farmer would do a profile test. Additionally, the farmers would waste operating hours changing the calibrations to ensure uniformity.
Functions of the Stara Spreading application
The main purpose of the application is to help the farmer during the adjustment and calibrations of the Stara agricultural spreader, as the parameters may vary according to the product to be applied. In general, the application has four main functions:
1. Adjustments of the spinner disk vanes of the agricultural spreader
The adjustments of the vanes help the operator to position the vanes, providing instructions to reach a coefficient of variation proper for the application, boosting the efficiency.
The vanes are essential to spread product in the field. They are in the rear axle of the spreader, where the product falls by gravity onto the spinner disks. On every spinner disk, there are two vanes that push the product to the crop field. The vanes set the place where the product will fall, that is, their angle in relation to the spinner disk. Thus, if the vane is wider, the product is spread to a longer distance; if it is shorter, it is spread closer.
The vanes also differ in size, which allows to reach different application ranges, reaching to 36 metres. Additionally, for a proper calibration, it’s important to consider other variations, such as product density and wind speed.
“This is the main function of the application. It enables the farmer to enter the machine and product information to be used, and the desired application rate they intend to reach. Thus, the application can do a single calculation to show the farmer exactly where to position the vanes, considering all the particularities.” Willian Brun, Stara product software engineer
2. Application profile test
Allowing the detail assessment of the application profile, such as the uniformity, coefficient of variation, and the fertiliser spreading efficiency.
In practice, the profile test is a simpler version of the adjustment of vanes. This resource is used in the case the farmer doesn’t want to check the vanes, just check the coefficient and be sure the spreading operation is going on as expected.
To accomplish that, the farmer collects the applied product samples, placing drip pans in their crop field, following a certain distance between one and another. Based on the collecting carried out, the application generates reports that highlight areas for adjustments and improvements.
“In the profile test, three to seventy-five drip pans are placed, depending on the test precision the farmer needs. For the adjustment of the vanes, three, five or seven drip pans are required. For both functions, the farmer weighs the samples that are on the ground and enters the data in the application. Then, the application does all the necessary math.” Willian Brun, Stara product software engineer
3. Product quality: fertilizer test
The test is done before the application. It consists of a product quality test. The purpose is to check the product uniformity. In other words, if there is a difference between the samples of the fertilizer to be applied. It is because there are products that may have different density, which influences in the operation quality.
To do the test, the farmer collects 10 samples of the same product volume, in order to check the uniformity. After entering the data collected in the application, the tool calculates and shows the product quality to the farmer so that they decide whether to apply the product or not.
4. History of tests
The application stores the history of tests done to ease the follow-up of the agricultural spreader performance in a long term. Thus, with the data available and easier calibration, it’s simpler to do new product tests to improve the crop field efficiency.
According to Brun, before the application, some farmers avoid performing calibrations as they were afraid to misadjust the agricultural machine. Now, thanks to the technology, it went away.
“The application enables the farmer to easily change the machine parameters, check the results and change them back to what they were previously, if required. As a result, they are more confident to set the machine up as they need, in order to ensure better spreading.” Willian Brun, Stara product software engineer
Advantages of using the agricultural spreader application
Generally, the main advantages of using the application are the agility and autonomy to calibrate the agricultural spreader. The farmer is trained during the technical visit so that it can perform the equipment calibration procedure, based on the farm data and its specific needs. Check out other application advantages:
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Precision and precision of the fertilizer spreader
Higher fertilizer precision, resulting in better quality and product usage.
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Reducing the input waste
Minimizing the fertilizer waste, providing more sustainable and economic practices.
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Increasing productivity
Boosting the crop field yield, providing a higher efficient management of the agricultural inputs.
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Frequent updates
Receiving frequent updates with new functions designed by the Stara Product Engineering expert team and counts on the farmers’ feedback.
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Intuitive interface
The friendly design eases the navigation even for users with little experience in technology.
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Support in different languages
The application is provided to users of different countries, being available in Portuguese, English, Spanish, and Russian.
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Saving time during agricultural machine calibration
The math is done by the Stara Spreading application and demands less passes in the crop field to do the tests, which makes the process more agile and easier.
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Easy and at no charge access
The app is available for Android and iOS. To access it, download the Stara Spreading application on your cell phone, as any other application. Whenever Stara releases a new app version, as recently, the farmers can download the update on the cell phone and enjoy the new functions.
After installing the application on the smartphone, follow the instructions. Identify each agricultural machine, if there is more than one Stara spreader in the farm, you can use nicknames, if you like. Then, select the spreader model and choose which function you would like to use. It’s simple and fast.
Thanks to all the Stara Spreading application advantages, the agricultural spreader calibration has become more agile and easier. With more autonomy, precision and safety during operations, the farmer has more control on the crop field spreading, more time and inputs to ensure good planting and higher yields.
Summary
The Stara Spreading application launched in 2019 and frequent updated was created to optimize the calibration of the agricultural spreaders of the brand, and reduce the product waste during operations. The application has four functions, among them, the adjustment of the vanes, the application profile test, the product quality test, and the history of tests. In this article, you learned the advantages and reasons that led Stara to become a reference in manufacturing agricultural machines in Latin America to develop an application, which is used by more than 10 thousand users in the field.
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