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I’d love to automate a push mower to mow for me. I think I will build my own RTK base for that following these instructions. https://simeononsecurity.com/guides

I’d love to automate a push mower to mow for me. I think I will build my own RTK base for that following these instructions. https://simeononsecurity.com/guides/budget-diy-gps-gnss-base-station-setup-esp32-um980/ https://simeononsecurity.com/guides/budget-diy-gps-gnss-base... I want a push mower because the available robomowers all have tiny razor blades instead of a actual mower blade and a limited range. My lawn isn’t gigantic but it’s not perfectly smooth or even and I dread paying that price for something that either won’t work or frequently breaks the blades. As far as lidar and wifi positioning - that could give you sub-cm, but I would go away from positioning to create a mower that knows the difference between a road and a lawn, a flower and a weed, and your lawn and your neighbors. A dream would be just giving the mower the same ‘mow the lawn’ command you would give a teenager and it just working. With the way things are now, these mowers have to be driven around the perimeter and no-go zones created manually. I saw one guy whose lawn was more of a field plotting out the entire mowing track in software with his automated push mower. It’s better in the software then going out to the field to drive it like an RC car, but it’s still far from some5ing like ‘full self mowing’

SoftTalker 2y ago
Keep the push mower, get out of the house and get some exercise.
thelastparadise 2y ago
> the available robomowers all have tiny razor blades I was concerned about this as well when I deployed the first robot. After having a bunch of stumps removed from my yard, all my wires were messed up. So I actually switched to a big zero turn mower for about a year. You know what I found? The cut quality was worse, even with a sharp blade and perfectly leveled deck. The powerful traditional rotary mowers kick up a ton of dust, the wheels are much higher impact on the grass, and being a manual process it isn't practical to do every day or multiple times a week. We realized that we actually liked the "robot grass" much better, so at that point I fixed the wires and now the yard is better than ever. The reason the robot grass is much better is because it can cut much more frequently. I have them going daily in the AM and the yard is perpetually freshly mowed like a golf course. I just string trim about every other week. I'm not worried at all about the little blades (and we have a fairly rough yard being in a clearing on a mostly wooded lot on a hill). They recommend replacing them every month, but I get good results only changing them once a year.

SoftTalker 2y ago

Keep the push mower, get out of the house and get some exercise.

thelastparadise 2y ago

> the available robomowers all have tiny razor blades I was concerned about this as well when I deployed the first robot. After having a bunch of stumps removed from my yard, all my wires were messed up. So I actually switched to a big zero turn mower for about a year. You know what I found? The cut quality was worse, even with a sharp blade and perfectly leveled deck. The powerful traditional rotary mowers kick up a ton of dust, the wheels are much higher impact on the grass, and being a manual process it isn't practical to do every day or multiple times a week. We realized that we actually liked the "robot grass" much better, so at that point I fixed the wires and now the yard is better than ever. The reason the robot grass is much better is because it can cut much more frequently. I have them going daily in the AM and the yard is perpetually freshly mowed like a golf course. I just string trim about every other week. I'm not worried at all about the little blades (and we have a fairly rough yard being in a clearing on a mostly wooded lot on a hill). They recommend replacing them every month, but I get good results only changing them once a year.