Robot mowers

[kryten22uk]

Ok, so this is quite embarassing, but having changed the battery on my 1200R I noticed that the mower would still stop in the middle of the lawn with an 'Empty Battery' warning, so I whinged to the website which sold the battery and asked for a refund (incidentally they have completely ignored me, and there is no other way to contact other than email). However I have now noticed that the base station has a flashing yellow LED, which means guide wire is broken. I did the old AM radio technique to find the break and repaired it. Now the mower works fine.

It seems that the only reason that the mower was stopping in middle of the lawn was that it just trundles around forever looking for the guide wire. Whilst a break in the boundary wire will stop the mower, and hence warn you, a break in the guide wire doesnt stop the mower, so it will eventually run out of charge. Dunno why they do it like that.

So now I am thinking maybe putting the old/original OEM battery back in.

Moderator edit: no naming & shaming

[kooky guy]

normalbloke said:

Do all the robotic mowers rely on a wire system?
Apologies for being a late joiner to the thread and if it’s been covered before. Background, is I have a smallish lawn, and a trusty Honda Izy, which will be coming to the end of its life soonish. So I want to go battery. I was holding out for the upcoming Milwaukee mower( already have Milwaukee kit and batteries) but they keep putting it back, and allegedly price will be north of £1k. So, I’m also considering a robotic mower. My garden has walls on 3 sides, and two sections where the grass is edged by concrete edging strips instead of wall. There are no obstructions on the lawn whatsoever. Are there any systems that will recognise this boundary without a guide wire, or by mapping or other sensors to stop it mounting the edge strip and heading off into the yonder?
Thanks for your input.

Edited by normalbloke on Saturday 26th March 15:55

I was looking at the new Novabot that was being promoted on Indiegogo. That has no boundary wire but uses gps and a camera and actually looked quite good. Unfortunately, it wasn't available until July and it doesn't cut to the edge which I thought a bit limiting although 'to the edge' clearly means something different to some manufacturers than to me!

[bennno]

kryten22uk said:

Ok, so this is quite embarassing, but having changed the battery on my 1200R I noticed that the mower would still stop in the middle of the lawn with an 'Empty Battery' warning, so I whinged to the website which sold the battery and asked for a refund (incidentally they have completely ignored me, and there is no other way to contact other than email). However I have now noticed that the base station has a flashing yellow LED, which means guide wire is broken. I did the old AM radio technique to find the break and repaired it. Now the mower works fine.

It seems that the only reason that the mower was stopping in middle of the lawn was that it just trundles around forever looking for the guide wire. Whilst a break in the boundary wire will stop the mower, and hence warn you, a break in the guide wire doesnt stop the mower, so it will eventually run out of charge. Dunno why they do it like that.

So now I am thinking maybe putting the old/original OEM battery back in.

Moderator edit: no naming & shaming

aha that's useful, think i've same issue

[kryten22uk]

mrpbailey said:

I’m planning on scarifying my lawn next month, has anyone with a robot done so?
I’m wondering whether I will need to pull the boundary and this wires up to prevent chopping them?

You dont need to scarify right up to the border do you? Just run the scarifier upto the boundary wire. Of course, that doesnt help with the guide wire. But pulling up one guide is better than an entire boundary.

[Ean218]

Lily the Pink said:

Every year I think about getting a robot mower. And as I get older, the lawns, while occupying the same pace, seem to get larger. But it seems to me that this whole malarkey of burying a wire seems rather Heath Robinson - particularly as I have two separate areas with numerous trees - and that something more sophisticated, such as accurate enough satnav at an affordable price, must be just round the corner.

Am I in for a long wait ?

Our garden is all around the house in 3 sections with little throughways between, plus lots of trees. Putting the wire down took about 3 days worth in total but very worth it. I cannot see GPS ever being accurate enough for this application.

[BigBen]

Ean218 said:

Lily the Pink said:

Every year I think about getting a robot mower. And as I get older, the lawns, while occupying the same pace, seem to get larger. But it seems to me that this whole malarkey of burying a wire seems rather Heath Robinson - particularly as I have two separate areas with numerous trees - and that something more sophisticated, such as accurate enough satnav at an affordable price, must be just round the corner.

Am I in for a long wait ?

Our garden is all around the house in 3 sections with little throughways between, plus lots of trees. Putting the wire down took about 3 days worth in total but very worth it. I cannot see GPS ever being accurate enough for this application.

GPS could be good enough but an accurate enough system would be expensive, although the main problem is mower manufacturers are risk averse so are very worried about the perceived increase in risk of the 'mower in the pond' scenario. Note my opinion on mower manufacturers' levels of risk acceptance are based on pitching a wireless system to more than one of them over the years. If you are a mower manufacturer reading this PM me!

[M1AGM]

BigBen said:

Ean218 said:

Lily the Pink said:

Every year I think about getting a robot mower. And as I get older, the lawns, while occupying the same pace, seem to get larger. But it seems to me that this whole malarkey of burying a wire seems rather Heath Robinson - particularly as I have two separate areas with numerous trees - and that something more sophisticated, such as accurate enough satnav at an affordable price, must be just round the corner.

Am I in for a long wait ?

Our garden is all around the house in 3 sections with little throughways between, plus lots of trees. Putting the wire down took about 3 days worth in total but very worth it. I cannot see GPS ever being accurate enough for this application.

GPS could be good enough but an accurate enough system would be expensive, although the main problem is mower manufacturers are risk averse so are very worried about the perceived increase in risk of the 'mower in the pond' scenario. Note my opinion on mower manufacturers' levels of risk acceptance are based on pitching a wireless system to more than one of them over the years. If you are a mower manufacturer reading this PM me!

I cant see how GPS control is going to get a mower to within a couple of inches of an edge, and how would you plot every point of the boundary, easy if its a straight line but what if not? I have been using a robomower for 5 years now (Husky) and having another bigger one fitted later this week as we have a much larger property now. Wires are the only sensible way to run the system imo.

[Lily the Pink]

BigBen said:

GPS could be good enough but an accurate enough system would be expensive, although the main problem is mower manufacturers are risk averse so are very worried about the perceived increase in risk of the 'mower in the pond' scenario. Note my opinion on mower manufacturers' levels of risk acceptance are based on pitching a wireless system to more than one of them over the years. If you are a mower manufacturer reading this PM me!

Interesting - are you implying that a wireless system would not necessarily have to be GPS ?

[pquinn]

Lily the Pink said:

Interesting - are you implying that a wireless system would not necessarily have to be GPS ?

You can do it with beacons, the difference would be you'd probably have to do a training run to tell it where the boundaries were instead of it just running along wherever you'd put the wire. Would be more than accurate enough for positioning a mower.

Biggest advantage of the wire systems is they're (mostly) idiot proof, obvious to setup and really cheap and simple to implement.

[V-spec]

Segway Navimow seems to do this but I couldn’t find any reviews from real users (or where to buy one)
Looks expensive and I guess you need a 4G subscription on top

[BigBen]

Lily the Pink said:

BigBen said:

GPS could be good enough but an accurate enough system would be expensive, although the main problem is mower manufacturers are risk averse so are very worried about the perceived increase in risk of the 'mower in the pond' scenario. Note my opinion on mower manufacturers' levels of risk acceptance are based on pitching a wireless system to more than one of them over the years. If you are a mower manufacturer reading this PM me!

Interesting - are you implying that a wireless system would not necessarily have to be GPS ?

The system we proved was GPS based and would require a training lap of the garden to define the lawn area.

The latest Bluetooth standard has some provision for location based on beacons but I am not familiar enough with it to say if it would be viable in this application.

[random_username]

The latest Husqvarna professional series mowers can use GPS positioning (aka EPOS) so don't need guide wires:

https://www.husqvarna.com/uk/robotic-lawn-mowers/a...

Cheapest is around £5K so a significant uplift from the consumer models, but I'd imagine the technology will work it's way down the range over time.

[Scabutz]

It is possible to get centimetre accurate GPS location. But that needs an RTK chip, possibly 2 (one in mower, one in base) and they are very expensive - hundreds of pounds vs the coupe of quid the one in your phone cost.

You would still need to define the GPS boundaries some how. Could do that through an app maybe or it could learn using cameras and object detection also.

[M1AGM]

random_username said:

The latest Husqvarna professional series mowers can use GPS positioning (aka EPOS) so don't need guide wires:

https://www.husqvarna.com/uk/robotic-lawn-mowers/a...

Cheapest is around £5K so a significant uplift from the consumer models, but I'd imagine the technology will work it's way down the range over time.

Hmm, my 450x is being installed tomorrow, I’ll ask the installer about the EPOS system on the pro range.

[skilly1]

They are trialing robot mowers to cut golf courses where you need defined fairways and different cut heights and the mow needs to be very accurate.
From talking to the dealer they have to install some sort of beacon on the course to get accurate cutting as GPS alone is not good enough to get consistent accuracy.
The mower is the Big Mow by Belrobotics.

[kooky guy]

The Novabot that I referred to earlier is uses gps and a camera to remove the need for guide wires and is under £1k..

[beko1987]

Given how open source irobot roomba's and Neato Botvac robot vacs are, im surprised no one has yet hacked the Lidar hardware onto a robot mower and had that find the boundries.

Find a modern enough model with the wifi app and you could draw them yourself etc

[mrpbailey]

Flymo Easilife 150 down to £373 on Amazon, and the 500 for £410. Didn’t even know they made a 150.
I paid £426 a couple of years back for the 350 version so seems a decent deal.


https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08W8QH752/ref=cm_sw_r...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08W9PYZZ8/ref=cm_sw_r...

[jmsgld]

kryten22uk said:

Having fit the new battery, I looked on the Expert Mode Menu again, and I notice that the 'Capacity' of the battery had not changed. It still stated 1227mAh, which happened to be exactly the same as the capacity of the old battery in the photo above. Not sure what is happening here, as the original battery was a 2100mAh capacity, and my new battery was 2500mAh. Similarly, having charged it for 24hrs, the charge level was only showing 1200mAh. I'm not sure how accurate these figures are.

I too have just changed the battery for a cheap e-bay jobbie, Samsung cells, no circuit board / protection. It was working ok before but subjectively seemed to be returning to the base after a shorter cut period, and had over 2k charge cycles.

My stats are unchanged too, Capacity reported as 1358mAh and max charge is 1200mAh.

I wonder if there is some kind of safeguard that only lets the capacity remain static or fall, and it only charges to set limits within that capacity?
I am considering doing a factory reset. Does anyone's 1200r / rob 1000 etc give a max charge of over 1200mAh?

[Frimley111R]

mrpbailey said:

I’m planning on scarifying my lawn next month, has anyone with a robot done so?
I’m wondering whether I will need to pull the boundary and this wires up to prevent chopping them?

Yep, and with a big fk off one too. Just avoid the edges and you'll be fine. I forgot about the one across the middle but the cable is under the soil and a scarifier doesn't dig up soil so it was fine.