After I had set up this robot grass mower, I have to take a break to touch grass – here are the biggest mistakes I made
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I am currently testing my first robot -like lawn mower, and I am a scale of the home echiniger I used to be. It has been a humiliating journey to say it politely, and I am not even at the end.
When I was offered my first grass bone, I assumed that it would be about a similar experience if today’s testing Best Robot -Cleansmen. I have rated it for about a year now, and for the most part the setting up of them is a doddle: plug in your dock, spend five minutes on a ‘fast mapping’ run and you’re done. There are things you can do to personalize the installation and improve performance, but they are not essential. You don’t have to be a technical whizz to manage it.
The requirements for robotic mowers and robot vacuum cleaners are similar: both must logically navigate over an area, cover all soil and avoid obstacles, and then find their way back to their load dock. However, it appears that a grass bone is not only an outer Robovac with some added razor blades; The large, crucial difference is in the navigation process. Broadly, the majority of Navigate robot vacuums with LidarWhile robot lawnmaws rely on satellites.
The model that I assess is a mammothie yuka mini, and it mainly uses it GPS and an RTK receiver For navigation. Although that is not exactly the same for all models – older bots can still use a border wire, and some of the latest models, such as the Euphy E15 Robot lawn mowerTrust on cameras and do not need a RTK receiver – it is a common category Lawnbot, so my experience here will apply to a series of models of different brands.
I have not yet worked everything as I want, but I have learned a number of important lessons so far. Here are some important things to know before you start your own Lawnbot trip
1. RTK placement of the recipient is the key
Most robot -grass mowers, including my assessment model, are supplied with an RTK receiver. This is an important part of How grass bots navigate without border wires – It essentially helps to adjust the data of satellite positioning, so that it is correct up to a few centimeters instead of a few meters. After all, that kind of margin could be the difference between a lawn and the center of the driveway or flower bed.
An RTK receiver has the shape of the top of a large mushroom, with an antenna that protrudes from its base. The instructions of the Yuka told me that this could be mounted on a pole and recorded in the lawn, or could be confirmed on the side of my house. Option one seemed by far the easiest – not least because I tested at my parents’ house, and my father holds a particularly narrow guard of his electrical tools and would not be friendly to new holes that appear in the side of his house.
Unfortunately, option two is the superior choice if you want your grass bone to work effectively. The RTK receiver trusts a direct facial line for a series of satellites in the air. That means it must be in an elevated, fixed position with a wide view of the sky in a number of different directions, without things such as trees and structures that close above.
While attaching the RTK recipient to your house (or, in my case, the wooden side of a detached garage) is a bit of a job, it is initially also pouring into the lawn. The recipient requires a power source, which limits where it can go, and you must also be sure that the bone will not mow over its own power cable when it is appropriate.
2. Your load dock needs a good, fixed position
The Lawnbot has a load dock separately from the RTK receiver, where he returns to charge his batteries. It is surprisingly difficult to find a good, permanent place for the load dock to live.
The soil must be flat and hard. It must be in a position where the grass bone has access to the pieces of grass that must be cut. It must be relatively in the vicinity of a power output and so it is positioned that it does not mow its own charging cable. It can or may not be within the reach of the WiFi house (I am still investigating this part). And because the bone must have a direct facial line for at least a few satellites while it is moored, it cannot go under a hiding place or be tucked away between structures. To make a long story short, I still have to find somewhere that works on my test yard.
Initially I tried the charging station on a consecrated area near the back door, but in this place the robot kept telling me that the dock had been moved and it couldn’t go back forward. I think that is because it is impossible on concrete (or, at least difficult) to attach the charging station to the ground, and the dock shifted a bit when the grass bone was checked remotely / placed in and out.
3. Meter is full of unexpected obstacles
Since the start of my installation process I have been struck by how many unexpected obstacles have announced themselves. The Lawnbot has been entangled in the net over fruit plants. It digs in a trench when asked to find his way about a path of – admitted fairly deep – pebbles. The less precise mapping and positioning also has domino effects: there is a grassy path that may be two grass bots wide that refuses to mow my assessment model because it is too narrow. I also had to leave a thick border along the edge of a shallow stream that runs along the side of the garden, for fear that the Lawnbot could try to take a dip.
None of these things are particularly surprising, and I don’t think they represent shortcomings on the Lawnbot side. But I would encourage you to take the time to consider the layout of your garden, and what could be a challenge before you buy one of these.
Is it worth it?
At the time of writing, I am at the point where the Lawnbot will like to mow two unusually shaped lawn areas in my test yard, but it will not return to his dock without help. Even going that far was a challenge, and I would lie if I said I hadn’t considered throwing it in the neighbor’s pond and being done with it. But at the moment I actually feel pretty positive about the technology.
See you, the mammary just does so good job to mow the lawn. The results are neat and it does not miss places, and it will even make relatively steep slopes up and down without complaining. It is so much less effort than to do it manually. I don’t even mind checking it remotely about the narrow strips that it refuses to map, because it is still something that I can do from my phone while I am sitting on a covers.
If I can find somewhere to live the dock, so I don’t have to take it at a distance or wear the bone to and from the base, I will indeed be very happy with it. And maybe at that moment I will forget the pain to set it up.
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