John Deere Integrated Displays
A Deep Dive into Displays
What you see is what you get — and when operating off-highway equipment, what you see is vital to the work you do and the way you do it. With John Deere displays, what you see is one of many options.
Solutions at every size
At John Deere, we provide a family of display solutions for equipment owners and operators. This range of solutions starts with a simple configuration that features basic icons that flash warnings and expands into larger, reconfigurable, and customizable displays to fit specific applications.
"A skid-steer loader in construction or forestry, for example, doesn't have room for a large, reconfigurable display inside of the cab. They need something small that's going to fit up in the headliner or corner post," says Craig Graf, Module Manager at John Deere. "But in a bigger agriculture tractor, we have the capability to put larger displays in, and farmers tend to need a lot more of that information displayed. That's why having a range is so important, because there are so many vehicle platforms out there."
Having a wide range of solutions ensures that John Deere is able to fit any and all platforms. This empowers our customers to customize and determine precisely what they want — and don't want — for each piece of equipment. Keeping the voice of the customer in mind continues to be a high priority for John Deere as we develop display solutions.
"We're really looking at our Smart Industrial strategy and trying to dive more and more towards the voice of the customer," details Graf. "Our equipment factories talk to our customers to find out exactly what they're using these machines for, and our system architects develop the electronic design and go from there with their specific machine and application. The beauty is that we can customize and streamline to a point where customers have a display with all of the bells and whistles they need, and none that they don't."
Our customers are less likely to run into a scenario where their machine is equipped with a large system with icons and features they paid for but will never need. This is also a benefit in reliability, since their machines won't have extra parts that may go awry and impact the vital data they do need.
Durable, reliable customization
Working with our OEM customers is also a focus for John Deere. As an OEM ourselves, we understand the need for a display solution that is efficient to develop, cost-effective and reliable. Since we've been in the market for quite some time, we've been able to build a range of solutions to leverage when designing and developing.
"We have a library of designs that we use, and our system architects can take little bits and pieces from those to create a customized display without having to start from square one," explains Graf. "This not only helps with our customers' time to market, but also lowers some of the development cost."
Put to the test
Likewise, we understand the importance of building our products to stand the test of time and harsh environments. Throughout the years, we've developed and evolved our John Deere Qualification (JDQ) testing. These tests represent the life of our products out in the field and how they cope with a number of environmental factors — the hottest of hot and the coldest of cold temperatures, copious amounts of dust, and severe vibrations.
"Every few years we reevaluate these tests; some items are added, and others are changed slightly," says Graf. "To further test our displays, we've added a solar radiation test that emulates the sun coming in and beating down on the electronics."
Many inexpensive displays are not designed to withstand an environment with continuous sun exposure and high UV rays. They often utilize liquid crystal displays (LCDs) with films that will wrinkle and discolor with a lot of heat and sunlight. Understanding what these designs need to withstand is critical, and John Deere is able to test everything in-house.
John Deere displays are readable in even the harshest, most direct sunlight offering controls that customers can dial down within the display. This allows for ease of use at night, when the last thing customers want is a screen blinding them while they are trying to operate a machine.
Take an even deeper dive into John Deere displays by exploring the features and specifications of our integrated display offering.