Solar Powered Lawn Mower Cuts The Grass So You Don’t Have To

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It takes a lot of power and energy to keep grass levels down to an appropriate level; especially when it’s hot out. If cool glasses of lemonade aren’t around, the task at hand may not be completed any time soon causing the unkempt blades of green (or yellow) vegetation outside to continue their path of growth towards the sun.

Instead of braving the oven-like temperatures which will inevitably drench the person in sweat, this solar powered robot has been created ready to take on the job. With the heart of an Arduino, this device shaves down the grass on a regular basis, rather than only chopping down the material when it gets too long. This helps to save electricity since the mower is only dealing with young and soft plants whose heads are easily lopped off without much effort.

Internally, the robot’s circuitry interfaces with an underground wiring system that defines the cutting zones within the lawn, and proves to be a simple, accurate, and reliable approach to directing the robot where to go. If the device travels under a shaded area, a battery kicks in supplying energy to the engine. When sunlight is available, that same battery accumulates the electricity, storing it for later.

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Solar Camping On Steroids

[Rick] does a lot of camping, but he loves his electronics. So he’s now on his third iteration of his solar-powered battery box, and it packs quite the punch!

It’s a pretty simple build, but very effective. [Rick] is using a 200W solar panel, a 20 Amp MPPT solar charge controller, a large 100Ah Military Spec Deka 6TMF deep cycle battery, three 12 volt car accessory outlets, and to box it all up — an inexpensive plastic tote from Walmart to keep it dry in bad weather. The only problem we can see with this is that since the battery isn’t a sealed gel cell, it could out gas inside the tote which might cause him problems down the road. He’s aware of this though so the lid is only on when it needs to be.

This unit can power pretty much anything that runs on 12 volts, from USB devices, to camping light batteries, air pumps for air mattresses, C-PAP machines via the included A/C inverter, and it can even run an EdgeStar FP-430 portable fridge/freezer for 3+ days before even needing to plug in the solar panel for recharging! Total system cost is a bit high at around $1000 — but that includes the portable fridge, solar panels, and all accessories and miscellaneous hardware that went into assembling the system.

Stick around after the break to see the video demonstration.

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