Method for remote monitoring equipment for an agricultural machine

Abstract

A method of providing information from a plurality of fleet machines located at a plurality of locations for purposes of permitting a manager of fleet equipment to make management decisions pertaining to a fleet comprised of such equipment, monitoring functional operational data from individual machines in a fleet of machines, conveying the monitored data to a remote server, converting the monitored data into a first group pertaining to current existing operational data, and into a second group comprised of past historical data, and transmitting by wirelss means to a person having responsibility for the fleet information at least one of the groups of data.

1 - 15 . (canceled)  
   
   
       16 . A method of providing information from a plurality of fleet machines located at a plurality of locations for purposes of permitting a manager of fleet equipment to make management decisions pertaining to a fleet comprising the steps of: 
 providing an information retrievable system including a customer service application and a data server;    requesting a configuration selection from the customer service application; and    triggering the machine to cause information to be passed to the data server based on the configuration selection to create a configuration file.    
   
   
       17 . The method of  claim 16  wherein the configuration file is comprised of data regarding at least one of machine location, area covered by the machine, engine hours, ground speed, engine speed, fuel used, fuel used/hour, load functions, current machine locations, engine coolant temperature, and rear PTO speed.  
   
   
       18 . The method of  claim 16  wherein the informational system further comprises a central information and communications server which handles over-the-air information transmission to the data server.  
   
   
       19 . The method of  claim 16  wherein the data server accepts operational data predetermined to be emergency conditions and reports the same to a plurality of predetermined destinations via e-mail.  
   
   
       20 . A method of alerting an individual of an emergency within a fleet of agricultural machines comprising the steps of: 
 monitoring functional operation data from individual machines in a fleet of machines;    conveying the monitored data to a remote data server;    accepting a red alert report from an agricultural machine in the fleet with the data server; and    sending a red alert e-mail from the data server to an e-mail address automatically upon receipt of the red alert report.