ASABE S658 Planter Test Standard: 2. Monitoring System Test

Highlights U.S. Standard for testing and reporting performance of planter monitoring systems. Accompaniment to ASABE S658 test standard for planter row units. Excel spreadsheets available at https://www.asabe.org/S658 to analyze data and report test results. Abstract. A working group composed of individuals from industry and universities was formed over four years ago and prepared a new standard (ASABE S658) for evaluating planter seed spacing and monitoring system performance. This voluntary test standard is composed of three parts: S658-1, Singulating Seeding Equipment Test Methods Part 1: General Information (ASABE Standards, 2024a) S658-2, Singulating Seeding Equipment Test Methods Part 2: Monitoring Systems Performance (ASABE Standards, 2024b) S658-3, Singulating Seeding Equipment Test Methods Part 3: Seed Spacing Performance (ASABE Standards, 2024c) The X658 working group as part of the ASABE MS-49 Crop Production Systems, Machinery, and Logistics Committee believes there is a need to communicate and introduce the details and rationale of these test procedures to the planter related industry and the ASABE community so that going forward these procedures can be used when comparing the performance of these systems and thus minimizing any ambiguity when communicating performance. This article focuses on testing planter monitoring systems (Parts 1 and 2), while testing row unit performance (Parts 1 and 3) is described in Kocher et al. (2025). In addition to the nuts and bolts of the testing procedure and analysis in the Standard document, ASABE hosts Excel workbooks that include the necessary programming so that, when test results are entered, performance measures are calculated, graphs are plotted, and results are automatically entered into the report formats. This article also includes a discussion of concerns the working group had during the development of the Standard. Keywords: Miss, Multiple, Performance, Planter monitor, Seed sensor, Seed spacing, Simulation, Singulation, Standard, Test.