Seems like a big opportunity for improved operator ergonomics would be some kind of open standard bus used for simple commanding - could be either electrical or software. This way, a set of "soft buttons" could be provided on the wheel or front panel which can be mapped to actions on accessory equipment, so that e.g. starting and stopping the seeder (and perhaps seeing its OK/NG status) could be done without having to reach around to its own controller.
This would be fairly simple to implement using a commodity serial bus if everyone could get together and agree on something, but I don't know if agricultural implements have enough of a vendor lock-in paradigm that e.g. the tractor manufacturer would be discouraged from building features to support third-party implements.
There is a problem safety. I work for John deere. We have some products that are not being developed because if they were some remote hacker could open the vavles on the anmoina tanks as the farmer is driving by a school and kill all 60 children out at recess. There are real dangers here, and things are going to get more locked down in the protocol over time to ensure that those scenarios don't happen.
The above is not about third parties. If we conclude we can trust you we will even give you a key to our cryptography. However trust will not be easy to establish.
I mean I agree, but it'd require a lot of backwards compatibility and a push to get rid of existing standards, which can take decades. I mean we don't even have a unified cable standard around computers / laptops yet. Ideally I'd be able to buy a new PC with only USB-C ports in it, but we're nowhere near that.
This would be fairly simple to implement using a commodity serial bus if everyone could get together and agree on something, but I don't know if agricultural implements have enough of a vendor lock-in paradigm that e.g. the tractor manufacturer would be discouraged from building features to support third-party implements.