I found this in my archives http://www.ecomowtech.com/hardware.html it's probably 8 years old, lovely idea, wonder if they ever did something with it...
tangentially maybe microbial batteries could one day become efficient enough or be used in places where slow is ok
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_fuel_cell
OpenMower – Open-source robot lawn mower [video]
21–30 of 39 posts
Re: OpenMower – Open-source robot lawn mower [video]
#22This was a pitch of mine. Replace traditional lawn care with automated solutions. I would’ve distributed this to ~6 mowers. That was the easy part. The hard part was making it look nice. The people that pay high prices for lawn care want it to look it a certain way. I couldn’t get over that hurdle. I could but it would’ve been me driving over the already cut grass with specific grooming tools, and effectively negatin…
I have a gardener, and I can tell you that the mowing itself is the trivial bit. It's maybe 10% of lawn and garden work. If you want to automate the rest, it's not going to be possible unless we have something like the Tesla Bot.
Re: OpenMower – Open-source robot lawn mower [video]
#23Post needs to have the title updated. Even though it is called OpenMower it is not open source, it uses the CC-BY-NC-SA license. The readme of the project has been updated to remove the claim that it is.
Of course a person is allowed to license their software however they like. However, I might also note that creative commons is not recommended as a license for code: https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-comm....
Re: OpenMower – Open-source robot lawn mower [video]
#24Post needs to have the title updated. Even though it is called OpenMower it is not open source, it uses the CC-BY-NC-SA license. The readme of the project has been updated to remove the claim that it is. Of course a person is allowed to license their software however they like. However, I might also note that creative commons is not recommended as a license for code: https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-cre…
I would say it is open source, but not "Open Source Initiative approved" open source.
Re: OpenMower – Open-source robot lawn mower [video]
#25RTK GPS is still too expensive for this to be affordable I think a sickle style mower is the future of electric mowers as they use less energy per blade of grass cut
what's affordable? You can buy corrections and a $300 GNSS receiver or buy two $300 GNSS receivers. That's not too bad for something like a robot mower.
RTK DIY kits for precision-steering tractors are another amazing application of the technology: https://youtu.be/Kwxpo04AC5Q
Re: OpenMower – Open-source robot lawn mower [video]
#26I found this in my archives http://www.ecomowtech.com/hardware.html it's probably 8 years old, lovely idea, wonder if they ever did something with it... tangentially maybe microbial batteries could one day become efficient enough or be used in places where slow is ok https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_fuel_cell
Looks very much Fi in SciFi to me.
Not saying that it cannot work, but this has so much hurdles to overcome before being something that can work, let alone be produced (at home) or mass-produced and sold, that its at most "really interesting".
Re: OpenMower – Open-source robot lawn mower [video]
#27This was a pitch of mine. Replace traditional lawn care with automated solutions. I would’ve distributed this to ~6 mowers. That was the easy part. The hard part was making it look nice. The people that pay high prices for lawn care want it to look it a certain way. I couldn’t get over that hurdle. I could but it would’ve been me driving over the already cut grass with specific grooming tools, and effectively negatin…
Wrong market. Make a model for farmers and rural citizens that don't care about the look of a rough cut. We just need to cut down a lot of grass regularly to prevent those areas from becoming a breeding ground for insects and rodents. Then use your revenues to iterate on a version for people that want a lawn that looks like plastic.
I'm the target demographic here. I have 5 acres of mostly non-wooded property. I just need it cut and don't care for striping or any of that. I was mowing with a zero turn with 48" deck. Last year we upgraded to a much bigger deck and the old 0turn sits idle. I wanted to tinker with it and do something similar to this to at least mow the "back 40" where there isn't much to navigate around.
Re: OpenMower – Open-source robot lawn mower [video]
#28RTK GPS is still too expensive for this to be affordable I think a sickle style mower is the future of electric mowers as they use less energy per blade of grass cut
Agreed on RTK cost. Two RTK receivers cost about the same as a commercial robot lawn mower.
I have half-finished contraption on my garage desk, consisting of hoverboard electronics and motors (cheapest battery, motor, power electronics combo), PX4 autopilot and a spinning disc with Husqvarna razorblades as cutter. Time will tell if I muster enough energy to deal with the rest of the plan this summer- Raspberry Pi running ROS and Kinect for SLAM.
Right now though, it's just a scary RC vehicle capable of doing wheelies (hoverboard motors have a lot of torque).
Re: OpenMower – Open-source robot lawn mower [video]
#29This was a pitch of mine. Replace traditional lawn care with automated solutions. I would’ve distributed this to ~6 mowers. That was the easy part. The hard part was making it look nice. The people that pay high prices for lawn care want it to look it a certain way. I couldn’t get over that hurdle. I could but it would’ve been me driving over the already cut grass with specific grooming tools, and effectively negatin…
I have a gardener, and I can tell you that the mowing itself is the trivial bit. It's maybe 10% of lawn and garden work. If you want to automate the rest, it's not going to be possible unless we have something like the Tesla Bot.
You're not wrong, but there is definitely a niche for areas with much higher ratio of mowing to gardening work.
Re: OpenMower – Open-source robot lawn mower [video]
#30Using slic3r as the coverage planner for mowing is an extremely cool and clever idea.
When you delve into the source code of 3d printer slicers, you realise the actual smart work really is done inside polygon libraries. Ie. 'take this polygon and inset it by 1mm, returning the smaller polygon and the old perimeter'. Using that primitive, you can make a lawn mower.
I was impressed to see a decent traveling salesman estimate algorithm in my last romp through a slicer's source code.