The use of CAN-Bus messages of an agricultural tractor for monitoring its operation

The development of electronic components in engine regulation leads to the possibility of obtaining a large amount of parameters of control processes. Nowadays, these data can be read in an easy way due to the properties of used networks. The data obtained from the data bus must be processed carefully; otherwise, there is a risk of erroneous results. The article presents the results of measurements performed on four tractors. We focused on comparing the fuel consumption of engines and the accuracy of flow measurement readings from the CAN-Bus of these tractors. Even the same engines may show considerable differences in fuel consumption, taken from the CAN-Bus. The maximum deviation of the measured values ranged up to around 40%. However, the value of about 41% was measured in the range of fuel consumption of around 10 kg/h, the error of that tractor at the consumption of about 40 kg/h fell to 1.5 kg/h. A significant difference occurred in the tractor with a 235 kW engine. The consumption in the range of 50 kg/h showed an error of 8.4 kg/h. An improvement of the results can be achieved using derived regression functions. Based on our experience with the measurement of other types of tractors, we know that a similar situation with the accuracy of CAN-Bus data is also an issue in other categories of vehicles.