The summer and its rabid heat is here and i still have a lot of lawn that hasnt been replaced by gardens yet (work in progress) and grows super fast
Im trying to get better and decouple myself from cloud services, but my searches for what robotic lawn mowers are self hostable/dont require wan isnt giving me confidence
I might just deal with the heat and get a push mower and deal with it, but if anyone has experience with a good local-only robotic lawn mower, or which ones to avoid - id love to hear it
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I’ve seen some online powered by ardupilot/inav controllers.
Here is the github: https://github.com/ClemensElflein/OpenMower
Been following them for a bit, was going to build one a few years back, but instead bought a riding mower to pull double duty on teaching my daughter driving skiils
That’s pretty interesting. I remember when ‘robotic mowers’ became a buzz word way back when. They just never seemed to really take off on a mass consumer level or maybe I just haven’t noticed. Now something like a DeepKron would interest me.
I have own, it’s been running for like 5 years now and I have never mowed my lawn manually more than one per year.
Overall it’s not zero work and maintenance, you still need to do stuff. But like 1/10th of how much time and effort it took before
There’s a lot more options now. A family member got one like a year ago and loves it.
My problem with them was they never seemed to be able to handle a yard large enough in order to justify their price.
Mine is 600sqm (squared meters) and my robot clear it just fine
Sometimes, I envy you guys with your smaller lawns. I’ve got about 4 acres of ‘lawn’ which is partially taken up with a large set of raised vegetable gardens, goat and chicken pens, A couple acres to raise a few head of cattle on, then scrub brush and woods, and then 15 acres of farmland.
And you need a robotic lawn mower? Use cattle as lawn mowers … Free fertilizer too
No, no…sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that I need a robotic lawnmower. Well, it’d be super cool, but it would have to be scaled considerably and hooked up to GPS. More so that I am at times envious because it takes me a good week+ to groom it all. The livestock tend their own plots, and the manure goes in a compost bin and then to my personal gardens.
Mine is 8100. Everything I was looking at, at that time, could only handle half at best.
That’s not a lawn. It’s a field you can grow crops on. You need John’s Deers…
I do grow crops on it.
You can easily get several models capable of more than that now, but they’re pricey.
A lot of the Husqvarna/Gardena brand can be improved with a daughter board by Robonect.
there are a couple of projects I’ve seen, and surely people will fork off one of the open robo-vac projects to spin knives.
Robot mowers are in this grey area where if you have a big enough area to mow that you cant walk it in 15-30 minutes with a push mower, you could get a small riding mower for the same price, and now you also have a handy tractor too.
I like them, but that’s because i’m a lazy tech head, but just like high end robot vacuums they seem like one of those things that you spend good money on, they work reasonably well for a while, then break and are unfixable and the company behind them doesn’t help.
that said… there is a decent crossover in the region of “lazy tech head” and “enough disposable income” that would use a robot mower on a small lawn.
My front yard takes over an hour with a push mower and the terrain is too complex for a ride mower. I’d be curious if I’d be the exception, unless the robot mowers are terrible at landscape changes like a robot vacuum would be. Including some boulders… But maybe still cheaper to hire some kid if I get that far on the lazy scale.
Mine runs really well in my somewhat complex yard. I have a firepit with an angled bench, a dugout trampoline, a swing set, several randomly placed trees, and currently an aboveground pool with solar heater in my yard. None of these things are mapped out, I only mapped the edge of my yard with it. It also handles my driveway which is partially covered in grass and accessible through a narrow gate (~10cm on either side of the mower when it passes through). For ~800€ I think it performs really well, and everything is fairly cramped in my 400sqrm yard, so lots of narrow passages for it to navigate.
Edit: I did modify it slightly by printing a larger disc for the knives so it cuts closer to the edge of the mower body.
Not sure “selfhosted” is the right term here, but a Quick Search™ for “opensource lawnmower” returns this:
https://github.com/ClemensElflein/OpenMower and https://openmower.de/
… I have no idea but I would imagine there’s a large overlap with the vacuums
That pretty well describes 1st generation robo mowers: lawn roombas.
Thankfully they’ve evolved significantly since then and are on 4th generation tech now.
Not really, apart from some software algorithms I guess. Totally different stuff, they use a perimetrali wire with radio signal to detect borders and can work up and down slopes and have much more advanced security measures since we’ll your pet tail might be in the way. Also more security as those might be snatched by thieves walking long side your lawn … And they are built to live under rain. Hail and scorching sun.
Not a direct answer to your question but the first step in replacing a lawn with a garden the nodig way is to cover the grass with something like cardboard and then cover the cardboard with as much as 12 inches of woodchips.
You can get the woodchips for free most of the time as arborists need places to dump. Try to be careful of the type of tree however as some trees have a higher activity than others.
Xeriscaping. Lawns started as a form of opulence and stature of the rich. It signaled wealth as they were rich enough to afford to have a lawn, pay for it’s grooming and labor, and not use it to grow food, along with paintings of oversized livestock. Let the chips mellow for a while before planting the garden as rotting vegetation puts out a crazy amount of heat and will scorch tender sprouts. If you’ve ever stuck your hands in a compost bin, it’s quite toasty.
I wish openmower supported more HW.
There’s also Vitulus at https://lacina.dev/ that seems like it has potential, but I haven’t looked too deeply at what state it’s in.
I self host and run a considerable amount of open source software, locally and through a remote VPS.
Knowing how much I tinker and mess with configs and settings until breaking things usually, this would not be a good idea for me.
It’s important to me to use devices and services that are local only, but I could only find such robot mowers that are beyond my skillset to build. I have no interest in building and 3d printing and flashing firmware, etc. I just want to buy a device and use it, without my privacy being sold. I’m willing to pay, but I guess there’s not enough market for anyone to build/sell that.
Same with vacuums, by the way. I have a dreametech model that’s supported by Valetudo, but the instructions to flash it sounded difficult and risky enough that I just use it as is, with my home map (and whatever other data it gleans) going through Dreametech’s servers and being sold to whomever.
Sad.
I have the parts together for converting an older Ryobi cordless. Couple of DC motors and a Beaglebone Y-AI for the realtime RF5 controllers along with an ardusimple rtk gps. That might end up being a winter project.
I’ve built a self driving GPS for a tractor so this shouldn’t be too much of a lift.
It depends on what you mean by robotic mowers. If you mean motors that drive the wheels and you don’t have to walk behind them (or sit on them), yes, these exist without any cloud service. However, if you mean autonomous, then I don’t think those are here yet. The non-cloud robot mowers use human held remote controls.
I can think of one that is autonomous and doesn’t require the cloud for operation, but does require the cloud for the inital setup and mapping. Once it has the map loaded in, it doesn’t need an internet connection.
I might just deal with the heat and get a push mower
You’re a better man than I Gunga Din. I got up at 5:00 AM the other day and cut grass. I’ve got a lot of lawn, so I’ve got a 54" Toro ZTR and a bush hog for the tractor. It’s 109 F in the shade, and the ‘feels like’ temp is probably hotter than Beelzebub’s ball sack. There’s be no way I’d push it.
