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OpenMower – An open source lawn mower

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Re: OpenMower – An open source lawn mower

#91

Post by piltdownman »

lionkor wrote: post #60
aaron695 wrote: post #7

Here's what robotic mowers blades look like to understand how they work - https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/676d76e61268a4... We just got a Sunseeker X7 to do ~4 acres of grassed area but probably ~2 acres will be garden beds and roads etc The hardware is there, it's all software now. People talk about updates and the robot improved amazingly, comments like - "these scuffs are from pre-update" These are E…

The wildlife (like hedgehogs) will feel very audited when they get sliced up by a razorblade, run over, and can barely drag themselves off your lawn to bleed out throughout hours of pain. If they don't bleed out, they often end up mutilated, unable to properly eat, walk, etc. Nice wildlife auditing. Hedgehogs are endangered in lots of areas of the world. Run your robot lawnmower during the day. If you don't like that…

They're certainly not endangered. They were "Least Concern" up until the last few years but have been reclassified as "Near Threatened" due to greenfield sites turned over to land development fragmenting their habitats. The most likely place a person will see them in 2025 is flattened on a road.

Domestic gardens make up an almost insignificant percentage of their natural habitat in any case, and any sort of HOA or Estate Management scenario would likely make it a violation to rewild a garden sufficient to create an amenable hedgehog habitat.

In short, its the responsibility of land utilised for agriculture - and this is recognised by measures around Europe such as the Eco-Scheme and ACRES (Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme) which indirectly support the re-establishment of hedgehog populations.

Re: OpenMower – An open source lawn mower

#92

Post by WillAdams »

lm28469 wrote: post #82
WillAdams wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My solution has been even simpler --- I just use a reel mower (on an admittedly small lawn, ~1/3rd of an acre) --- it's a decent workout, esp. when I strive to finish quickly. (the one time I asked my son to cut the grass he broke the reel mower)

I'm on the scythe team, it's quite relaxing and a good workout, 0 noise, almost no insect/animals killed. Sure it's slow, but you can skip the gym for a few days after mowing, it hits my abs harder than 200kg dealifts or a day of rock climbing. < $100 for a top of the line that will serve you, your kids and their kids

Respect!

(I used a scythe when I was much younger for haying on the less than 5 acres my father owned and _that_ was a workout)

There is the steeply angled bank mentioned elsethread which I arguably should cut thus... maybe next year.

Re: OpenMower – An open source lawn mower

#93

Post by skewbone »

conductr wrote: post #18

This is a fun project to take on. Couple years ago I built an autonomous controlled chassis onto a push reel mower (removed handles of course). It’s not as safe as the typical robot mower given they use tiny blades to trim (and reel mower will take a finger) but it’s relatively low maintenance since the blades need replacing every month or so. I opted for lidar as the reviews on RTK GPS seem pretty hit or miss and di…

Would you mind sharing any pictures or video about the mower? I converted my push reel to electric without a kit, and have been considering putting separate high torque, low speed motors for drive wheel control to start moving towards autonomous cutting. Would be great to see your experience!

Re: OpenMower – An open source lawn mower

#94

Post by vdupras »

IgorPartola wrote: post #25

I was hoping this was more of a hardware project as in building the physical mower from scratch. I am not quite sold on the robotic mowers but the quality and market for riding mowers is insane right now. I own two riding mowers and both are completely dead. One needs a rather expensive wiring harness so they it would stop catching fire when it runs. The other has the most common single cylinder engine that comes in…

> And the prices of these new and used are out of this world even compared to baseline inflation.

How many such cases do we need to have to be able to put out the hypothesis that the baseline inflation figures we're being fed are wrong?

Re: OpenMower – An open source lawn mower

#95

Post by infecto »

lukan wrote: post #72
alias_neo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming (perhaps unreasonably?) that given the suggestion you could run it at night, that it's silent, or near silent? If that's not the case, GP must be a madman.

Anything having lots of rpm ain't silent. Especially not at night. So they surely ain't as loud as a combustion lawn mower and are pretty silent in comparison, so maybe you won't notice them in the city with its background noise. But in rural areas I perceive them as noisy even on daylight with normal noise level. And I never saw anyone using them at night - for a reason. And as for gp .. he is already shadowbanned a…

Electric motors can run at quite high rpms with lower decibels. Sure not silent but the origin is low enough that at a distance say 25 feet it’s almost silent.

Re: OpenMower – An open source lawn mower

#96

Post by aswegs8 »

boomskats wrote: post #74

So is this like Valetudo[0] but for mowers? Very cool! I wonder how much overlap / shared code there is between robot vacuums and robot mowers. [0]: https://valetudo.cloud/

Thanks for the link, this is super useful. I will probably use both valetudo and openmower soon! Is there anything comparable for security cameras?

Re: OpenMower – An open source lawn mower

#97

Post by mattw2121 »

deadbabe wrote: post #35
deckar01 wrote: post #24

I have been dreaming of small solar robots that quietly trim the grass all day. Static blades pulled across the grass in short bursts. RC orchestration guided by security cameras.

You cannot just trim grass all day unless you want a terrible lawn. You need to cut at the right hours.

I have one of the best looking lawns in my neighborhood. I cut it whenever is most convenient for me. That might be any time between 9AM and 7PM. I cut it no matter the outside temperature. The only thing I avoid doing is cutting it while wet.

Re: OpenMower – An open source lawn mower

#98

Post by zeroping »

jeremysalwen wrote: post #56

I run an Open mower on my 1400 square meter lawn in the USA. AMA. (ps. If you are interested make sure to go to the discord instead of just reading the docs or GitHub pages -- that is where all the activity is!)

How difficult was it to get the needed hardware in the US? It seems hard or expensive to do so.

Re: OpenMower – An open source lawn mower

#100

Post by a_subsystem »

lionkor wrote: post #60
aaron695 wrote: post #7

Here's what robotic mowers blades look like to understand how they work - https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/676d76e61268a4... We just got a Sunseeker X7 to do ~4 acres of grassed area but probably ~2 acres will be garden beds and roads etc The hardware is there, it's all software now. People talk about updates and the robot improved amazingly, comments like - "these scuffs are from pre-update" These are E…

The wildlife (like hedgehogs) will feel very audited when they get sliced up by a razorblade, run over, and can barely drag themselves off your lawn to bleed out throughout hours of pain. If they don't bleed out, they often end up mutilated, unable to properly eat, walk, etc. Nice wildlife auditing. Hedgehogs are endangered in lots of areas of the world. Run your robot lawnmower during the day. If you don't like that…

My dogs will eat them if they get hit. It's not a problem.
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