Comments on: R/C Lawnmower

By: blake

blake — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 17:09:20 +0000

cool idea but i want to see someone mow and entire lawn without walking be mower to make sure your mowing straight so that the yard looks good. i think i would probably look like a 6yr old mowed it with lots of uneven or missed patches.

By: maathieu

maathieu — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:30:56 +0000

I guess the “badtimes” virus is finally going to be a reality… :D

By: anon

anon — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:40:31 +0000

I’m telling you, we are on our way to ‘wall-e’ times baby!!!!! I would love to do that to mine.

By: japkin

japkin — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:28:11 +0000

People in the robot fighting community have been doing this for years…over a decade, actually. Nice implementation, but if you guys are really into this, check out the fighting robot competitions (yes, like BattleBots). It’s still around and a lot of fun…

http://robogames.net/events.php
http://botleague.net/
http://www.robotbooks.com/robot-competition-links.htm

By: tehgringe

tehgringe — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:28:02 +0000

The picture made me chuckle, great project.

I got bored reading all the comments, some good ideas in there, but we started getting some people nit picking over whether or not a mic.controller was needed, then the arduino bashers jumped in…yawn…I may from future not read the comments.

By: colecoman1982

colecoman1982 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:02:47 +0000

Cool project. Again, though, this is one of those projects where safety should be considered. I’m not saying that it’s so unsafe that it shouldn’t be done, but if your skilled enough to do the project in the first place, then you should be skilled enough to put proper safety features into it as suggested by Mr. Snuffelump towards the top of this thread.

As for the issue of American’s mowing their lawns, there are a numnber of reasons for it. As mentioned, many towns and cities will fine you if you let your lawn grow too high. Also, in many parts of the country, there are serious issues with ticks (a type of small bug that lives in tall grass, jumps on animals as they pass by, and sucks blood) spreading diseases such as Lymes Disease. One of ways to limit the spread is to keep the grass short.

By: Todd Grigsby

Todd Grigsby — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:05:36 +0000

First: Nicely done. Obviously functional and works as expected. I agree, though, that what you need is a tennis umpire chair so you’re not walking around so much.

Second: So much for going green… I don’t suppose you could take it the next step and make it battery or even solar operated?

By: Doug

Doug — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:43:11 +0000

@Hackius and others wondering about the grass cutting.
Its not an issue of it growing “a maximum of a finger or a hand in length.”, its keeping it a good length so that it is healthy and even. Not that my yard is healthy, I don’t cut it very often at all. Of course, I have tall fescue that can be around 4′ tall if it grows long enough in the summer. Yes, that is 4 feet (>1 meter). In July, this takes about 3 weeks of not cutting it.
On topic: I’m definitely doing this with my mower. The wheels on my push mower are wearing out, so this is the perfect excuse.
Note about GPS guidance. Unless you have a really big yard, GPS is probably not going to be accurate enough to tell the mower where it is. Most GPS systems get 3 feet precision at best (1m), and 100 feet (+30m) precision at worst.

By: nimitzbrood

nimitzbrood — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:36:35 +0000

@tj

I’m just tired of reading the constant arguments. As far as I’m concerned in an age where the average person sits on his butt doing nothing we should be glad that sites like this and the projects people post are there at all.

Oh and before you go on about _you_ please remember that just by doing what you do you aren’t the _average_ person.

Yes there has to be a line (one led blinking for example) but constantly bitching about a particular platform is petty, elitist, and annoying.

By: anonymous coward

anonymous coward — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:58:26 +0000

It seems nearly all of the rc mowers (besides the commercial versions) feature both large car batteries and also gasoline engines. It seems somewhat odd to me that they wouldn’t just affix an alternator to the mower shaft (or offset with a belt) and use only a small motorcycle or tractor battery for starting only. my $0.02

By: tj

tj — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:40:54 +0000

In the above “non-makers” context I’m assuming that is symbolic to anyone who doesn’t have their work on a niche-marketing sites that target the stay at home parent>trust fund baby>soccer kid demographics.

Some of the “non-makers” are too busy being productive in innovative careers that instead of reinventing the ‘wheel’ are evolving it’s multi-generation successors.

If I could make the money these people do off of ad revenue and product placement I’d be making stuff and noting other makes 24/7 too. The world doesn’t really evolve around your suburb, sorry for the reality check.

By: nimitzbrood

nimitzbrood — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:50:48 +0000

@Riley as far as I’m concerned because they decided to do things like this it really doesn’t matter which platform they chose to use.

*shrug* Some people just like Arduinos. And if they can produce things while the rest of the non-makers in the world sit on their asses in front of the TV then I welcome our Arduino overlords with open arms.

By: Riley

Riley — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:33:27 +0000

When did this place turn into Arduino pr0n? Seriously, that could’ve been done with discrete logic (hard) or with a Picaxe 18 (easy). Why the waste of an Arduino board?

By: Wwhat

Wwhat — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:00:52 +0000

He should get an umpire’s chair, as used in tennis, and sit in it while doing the lawn, this walking around it seems silly.

By: Sean

Sean — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:09:35 +0000

A relay held on by a monostable driven by a stay awake signal is about as close as you can get to failsafe. Send the stay awake command from the remote dependant on a button being held and it’ll stop if the rf drops, the Arduino crashes, the person holding the remote has a heart attack (assuming they don’t go into some kind of death grip)…..pretty much anything. If the mono isn’t reset in time……no power!