We dodged the rain bullet on Day 1 at the Farm Progress Show site, which means there were field demos and the weather stayed cloudy and cool – but dry. While I'm writing this on Day 2 where sunrise was beautiful, and there's no threat of rain for the remainder of the show, I still did a fair share of walking

With a new Fitbit Blaze to track my pace I see I walked over 17,000 steps on the first day of the show to get to all my events and meetings. I prefer to walk than ride the Willie-assigned Gator, leaving that machine for writers heading to the field to cover demos and such.

With good walking shoes and a big hat I made my way around the show site to start a three-day marathon of new tech and products it'll take us a few weeks to cover on the site, offering more details and information for you to use. But here's a quick look at a few things I learned on Day 1, and stay tuned to future coverage.

Agco has a global tractor line with an innovative approach to manufacturing that will allow the Massey Ferguson brand to grow around the world. The company is also showing a new 12-row folding corn head and will even launch a 6-row head in a couple weeks.

Case IH shared their automated concept vehicle, a cab-less version, and New Holland announced their approach which keeps the cab. Also had some great conversation with a couple of key leaders at Case IH, and you'll hear more of that soon too.

At DuPont Pioneer I learned that after looking 22,000 soil samples from 9,000 fields the company found soils deficient in P and K - a critical issues if you want to get the most out of these newest hybrids. And I learned that Qrome is on the way - early order details to follow.

Bayer is talking about Wipe Out Weeds – which is a fully developed crop protection program with residual preemerge products and more. And Bayer shared information about Poncho-Votivo 2.0, which is a corn-only product adding a new biological that provides complimentary control and higher yields. We'll have plenty of time to talk more about that since the company doesn't expect to launch it officially until 2019.

Kinze launched a new single-auger cart, it's first. It's an area that can be quite competitive and Kinze plans to play across the grain cart market – in effect doubling down by expanding the line in a soft market.

Talked about the 'right to repair' controversy with some key industry players, that's an evolving subject we'll be covering in FIN in the future too. It's also a complicated subject with some very heated issues, so stay tuned.

Visited Claas to talk Shredlage, a new forage harvester, interesting combine innovations and new balers – what I thought would be a short catchup meeting turned into a full blown press event. Keep watching.

And finally a visit to learn more about Climate View and their future sensor network. The key here is that sensors will be a growing part of your life, as long as you can do something with the data. From soil moisture, to organic matter, to rainfall, pulling that information into your future prescription writing software could be a big deal.