My neighbor pays $80/week all year round so the breakeven would be quicker, still not there for me yet. I have three separate patches of grass, I would love to see someone’s face when that thing came through a doggy door in the fence to mow!
What about this one, https://otolawn.com/. $340 and has spots to add fertilizer. I have been in my house for 4 years now. Every year I have done at least one Major project to the sprinklers. Busted valves, pipes, sprinklers, main shutoff…and I am still not all that happy with how they water. If I had to pay a professional to do all the repairs, this would have easily paid for one for each chunk of lawn I have.
I also think I could build one of these, two servos and it’s almost done. Add a moisture sensor, and wind sensor so it only comes on when it is calm…
P.S. I like yard work a bit so I do not see myself ever paying $80 a week, but I like robots and would rather spend my weekly yard work time toying with them when one of these gets a bit better.
My first impression is that the oto is more complicated than your sprinkler system. So I doubt the maintenance would get smaller.
I also don’t like having something attached to my spigot, with pressure, for more than a day. IDK why, but that seems risky. The sprinklers are on a backflow preventer and I have to winterize them. But they are solid connections (at least until you get past the solenoid). Every sprinkler system has a BFP, so my guess is that code came from some real injuries.
It is pretty neat though. My sprinklers aren’t set up perfectly (there is one corner with not much water and the back yard sprays some places that they shouldn’t). So having a smarter solution with aiming would be cool.
I agree that making one yourself would just need steppers and endstops, along with a solenoid and some perfect nozzle to shoot a directed stream. But don’t forget about the software. It would be some serious work for you, and a ton to hand it to someone else to set up in their lawn.
We have 1.5 acres. The back portion of our lot is just a wide open field that’s about 3/4 acre.
I’ve considered designing a robot mower that was solar powered. Let the batteries charge until they’re full, then have the mower mow until they’re depleted. Rinse, cycle, and repeat constantly. Or, it could charge during the day and mow at night.
There’s nothing to edge. Nothing to mow around. Neighbor’s fields are open to mine, so no issue if it runs a few feet wide. I could also bury a wire around the perimeter and use a solar panel and battery to run voltage through it like an invisible dog fence.
The mower could run straight until it hit the wall, turn some X degrees and do it again.
I’m thinking I could look at a ryobi electric mower to get ideas for the blade motor and chassis.
I like how the Tertill has solar panels and no base station. I like the idea of a cheaper robot running at high duty cycle and low speed driven by solar availability with no battery, rather than over-capable running at low duty cycle like a regular mower. For an ordinary mower it is absolutely critical to have over-capacity to minimize human time, but that makes it a poor starting point for a robot mower.
For a low-speed mower, I wonder if there is a better grass-cutting method than a high-speed spinning blade or plastic line. Perhaps a low-speed shearing action could cut grass like scissors instead. A hedge trimmer is like a bunch of pairs of scissors but instead of that, maybe a disc with a geared motor to effectively create a bunch of shears around the perimeter that operate at maybe between 2-8 Hz.
My back yard is let’s say 1500 sq. feet:
Suppose the robot were to cover the entire area every 3 days, and suppose it only works 8 hours a day when the sun is up. Then it must cover the entire area in 24 hours of running time. If the cutting path is 8 inches wide, then it needs to travel 2250 linear feet to cover the 1500 sq. foot area, and if the running time is 24 hours then it must travel ~94 linear feet per hour or 1.56 feet per minute, or about 1 inch every 3 seconds or so.
Not everyone’s yard is as small as mine, and maybe a reasonable target for the robot would be 1 inch per second, and there could be some leeway in the cut frequency. With 1 inch per second 8 hours/day and visits once every 7 days, you would get to ~11,000 sq. feet, which is about 1/4 acre (1/4 acre = 10,890 sq. ft.).
These rates assume the cutting is systematic, whereas random bouncing around will cut less frequently, so there is perhaps a tradeoff between speed and saving cost by avoiding GPS/RTK. My yard happens to have a fence and the small size means I can tolerate the loss in performance from random bouncing. A larger area with no fence could see benefit from GPS/RTK by cutting systematically and also keeping it from accidentally escaping.
I get interested in this every time I have to cut the grass.
My adjacent neighbors are up there in age so I’ve recently started cutting their yards whenever I do mine. I would love to find a more efficient method because that now takes me around 3hrs (without edging).
Maybe I can just do a low tech approach like @jamiek is thinking. Swap out the cymbals for scissors and just throw a bunch of these into the yard.
Haha. This happens to me all the time. I have over optimized my build files because I think about it every time I build.
With that attitude, I wonder if the laser mower would work better. There would certainly be less that could mechanically go wrong. A smaller robot is easier to make safe (if it had finger guards and you could just pick it up). The yard would have to be pretty flat.
I think only mow once a week. I wonder how ‘patchy’ the yard would look if portions only got hit every 5 days. I’m assuming a majority of the middle would get hit every day and only the outlier spots would vet hit less often.
Also assuming my “random” mow algorithm and not perfect stripes or encroaching rectangle.
Yep, Jamie’s thought provoking post got me wondering more broadly about alternative less common low energy consuming ways to cut/limit grass growth too. Before his post I was fixated on using popular spinning blades or trimmer lines. Now though, am wondering about other mechanical, electrical and relatively safe chemical options. Never thought I’d learn so much about dog urine.
Friend of mine is happy with his Husqvarna robot mower which seems to be constantly cutting and randomly roaming his 1/2" acre lot, leaving the ~0.25" clippings. Says his lawns seems healthier, greener and thicker than neighboring yards being manually cut 1-2 times a week.
Anyone else also thinking about scavenging motors, battery and misc parts from hoverboard? Seen various YT projects doing this, taking advantage of the relatively low cost mass manufactured high torque hoverboard motors.
They are a nightmare for animals though, hedgehogs get hurt pretty often, as well as toads, lizards and other small animals living in a garden (though I don’t know whether you guys actually have living animals in the US any more ).
The US is still generally filled with wild spaces. Moreso in Colorado than on the East coast. But we have anything from mice to bears here (and they are common enough to see them all). Don’t believe everything you see in movies. They usually film those in cities.
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