A Windows-based design environment for combine automation via CANbus

Experiments have shown that it is possible to use Windows as an operating system for soft real-time applications under certain conditions. The control environment of a combine harvester can be considered as a soft real-time environment because the occurrence of time jitter or the failure of an event will never lead to the failure of the whole control system. By making use of a standard Windows NT-XP environment, a robust and accurate 5 Hz timing performance was achieved.