Robo mowers?

[Crofter]

We spend a good chunk of time away from our place and the cost of employing a gardener to keep the grass down really does add up. 

 

I've had a quick glance online at robo mowers and they seem to start at under £400, which is much cheaper than I expected. I'm sure you get what you pay for, of course.

 

For it to be viable, I'd need something that that drive back to its recharging station autonomously. The space underneath the house would be absolutely perfect for this, there's even a power socket under there.

 

The lawn isn't as flat as I'd like which might be a challenge. I am gradually levelling out the worst of the bumps though. 

 

Anybody on here using one of these beasties? Is it reasonable to expect it to operate with minimal human intervention?

[JohnMo]

We had one for a number of years, we bought ours in 2014 for the same reasons. We had a Flymo robot mower, was good for the first 3-4 years and then things started to go wrong and after a couple of repairs, the battery gave in and a couple of other things at the same time, it got to the point we chucked it, as repair was way to expensive to justify.

 

But was really good when it was working, hopefully reliability has improved.  They can cope with rough terrain quite well. Two primary versions a guide wire embedded in lawn and ones that map the area or know where not to go, they are more expensive but possibly better.

[Crofter]

Thanks, that's quite encouraging. The cheapest ones appear to use some sort of optical 'grass recognition' and have to be physically stopped from falling down banks. 

 

I see Toolstation do a self docking/charging one for just over £400.

 

How do they cope with wet weather? Do they sense that the grass is wet and go and hide until it's ready to be cut?

[joth]

I've got a pair of husqvarna aspire r4 (one per lawn).

They're OK. 

You need a well maintained (not overgrown) lawn to start with - it won't tackle a jungle.

Laying the perimeter sensor wire correctly is crucial

It struggles around trees etc getting stuck in tree wells. We put in push-in edging for it to bump and turn around, but surprisingly fiddly to have it not get stuck

It doesn't work well in the wet. It has no rain sensor, I setup a Home Assistant automation to stop it mowing when grass is wet but for various reasons that's one of the least reliable automations I've had. (combination of different HA integrations failing, smh)

 

 

[Crofter]

16 minutes ago, joth said:

I've got a pair of husqvarna aspire r4 (one per lawn).

They're OK. 

You need a well maintained (not overgrown) lawn to start with - it won't tackle a jungle.

Laying the perimeter sensor wire correctly is crucial

It struggles around trees etc getting stuck in tree wells. We put in push-in edging for it to bump and turn around, but surprisingly fiddly to have it not get stuck

It doesn't work well in the wet. It has no rain sensor, I setup a Home Assistant automation to stop it mowing when grass is wet but for various reasons that's one of the least reliable automations I've had. (combination of different HA integrations failing, smh)

 

 

Is there another way of doing this? I don't mind having to manually tell it to go and mow, if that's something I could do over WiFi. I'd quite like something I can drive like a big toy car but I don't think that exists 😂. My problem isn't lack of time to do the job, it's the fact that I'm thousands of miles away...

[Declan52]

I have a kress nano which will cut up to 600sqm with ease. It requires a boundary wire to work. It takes a little time to peg it out and wire the charging station in, maybe an hour depending on the perimeter of your lawn. 

It will require you to do the first cut each year plus the edge needs strimmed every 2 weeks. Apart from that mine has worked this past 2 months with no issues. It was stuck in demo mode when I got it but the dealer sorted that out and it's been working away ever since. 

You use an app to set it up and control it so needs WiFi access to fully work though but it means I can send it out to work from anywhere and track how it's working. Mine cuts for 90 mins then goes and finds the boundary wire and returns home to charge and once charged heads back out again to cut until it's finished it's program. If it's raining it has a sensor, which you can turn off, and won't go out. You can set the wait time so it lets the grass dry, mine is 3 hours. Once that's up and it's not raining it will go on out. 

What robot you pick will depend on your area. From this info then you can see what is available. It will either be a boundary wire or a GPS version. Some have cameras but don't think they are as good 

 

[markc]

The Mammotion Luba (few variants, 2WD, 4WD and area covered) are excellent, I don’t have one but trying to justify getting one!

[Declan52]

9 minutes ago, markc said:

The Mammotion Luba (few variants, 2WD, 4WD and area covered) are excellent, I don’t have one but trying to justify getting one!

Looked at them but if I was spending that amount I want a specialised dealership network I can call if I'm in trouble.

[billt]

We've recently bought a Segway Navimow i108. It uses GPS so no boundary wires and it has a camera to help with obstacle detection.

 

So far it's looking good. It can manage our 4 grassy areas totaling 700sq.m. in time. To all intents and purposes it is silent. It uses the internet for rain warnings and it stops mowing if it rains - seems to be working reliably enough at the moment.

 

It should be autonomous; you set up a schedule and it will look after itself and you can check on it remotely if you wish. Setting it up needs a bit of trial and error, for instance if you've set the boundary too near an edge it can deviate a bit and get itself stuck - as it did yesterday while we're away so won't resume mowing until Thursday!. But I think all that needs is a minor adjustment to the boundary.

 

It space under the house wouldn't be suitable as both the mower in its charging dock and the RTK receiver need to have a good view of the sky. (That will be the case with any RTK mower.)

 

It remains to be seen how reliable it is and how long the battery lasts.

[Redoctober]

This is an interesting thread - one question though? How does it deal with the clippings? 

[Gone West]

We're looking into getting a robotic mower. We've only got around 650m2 of grass, but it's spread over five areas connected with slopes. We have to consider how much of an incline it can cope with, and because it's not smooth grass, whether we want the small cutting blades, that have to be changed more frequently, than a solid disc blade.

[Gone West]

1 minute ago, Redoctober said:

This is an interesting thread - one question though? How does it deal with the clippings? 

They just get cut up and left as a mulch, apparently.

[Declan52]

It only cuts a tiny amount of which falls in to the ground and is like compost eventually. You use one to maintain the garden more than cut it. After your first cut then you can reduce the cut height week by week till it's at what ever suits you. Mine is at 45mm.

[Declan52]

1 minute ago, Gone West said:

We're looking into getting a robotic mower. We've only got around 650m2 of grass, but it's spread over five areas connected with slopes. We have to consider how much of an incline it can cope with, and because it's not smooth grass, whether we want the small cutting blades, that have to be changed more frequently, than a solid disc blade.

Most don't cope well with slopes unless your spending major money £2-£3k.

[Gone West]

1 minute ago, Declan52 said:

Most don't cope well with slopes unless your spending major money £2-£3k.

Yes, that's what we've found so far. We've been looking at the Ambrogio models.

[Declan52]

16 minutes ago, Gone West said:

Yes, that's what we've found so far. We've been looking at the Ambrogio models.

Think you need one with rtk and 4wd which is code for expensive!!

[Gone West]

1 minute ago, Declan52 said:

Think you need one with rtk and 4wd which is code for expensive!!

I'm not sure how well RTK would work here. AIUI you need a good view of the sky, without obstructions, to see however many satellites it is, for the RTK to work.

[Bramco]

4 hours ago, joth said:

I've got a pair of husqvarna aspire r4 (one per lawn).

They're OK. 

You need a well maintained (not overgrown) lawn to start with - it won't tackle a jungle.

Laying the perimeter sensor wire correctly is crucial

It struggles around trees etc getting stuck in tree wells. We put in push-in edging for it to bump and turn around, but surprisingly fiddly to have it not get stuck

It doesn't work well in the wet.

We have a large area and a Husqvarna Nero - absolutely brilliant!  can't wait to finish the side area so it can get to work on the front.  We came back from 4 days away today - the back looks like a lawn, the front where Matilda hasn't been working is 4 to 5cm long!  So an hour or so mowing tomorrow!!  Must get the side seeded so she can work on the front!

There are lots of new mowers on the market but Husqvarna have been the Rolls Royce of Robot mowers for years - last year they saved us a) a big outlay on a ride on, b) many hours of mowing with a ride on and c) a headache with what to do with the clippings.  
 

Brother in law next door saw ours and bought 2, one for the back and one for the front. And he's got a couple of ride-ons.  His pov was that I was happily having a cold beer while he was chugging up and down on his ride on.

So basically - get one!!

[Declan52]

14 hours ago, Bramco said:

We have a large area and a Husqvarna Nero - absolutely brilliant!  can't wait to finish the side area so it can get to work on the front.  We came back from 4 days away today - the back looks like a lawn, the front where Matilda hasn't been working is 4 to 5cm long!  So an hour or so mowing tomorrow!!  Must get the side seeded so she can work on the front!

There are lots of new mowers on the market but Husqvarna have been the Rolls Royce of Robot mowers for years - last year they saved us a) a big outlay on a ride on, b) many hours of mowing with a ride on and c) a headache with what to do with the clippings.  
 

Brother in law next door saw ours and bought 2, one for the back and one for the front. And he's got a couple of ride-ons.  His pov was that I was happily having a cold beer while he was chugging up and down on his ride on.

So basically - get one!!

The dealer where I got mine was telling me he couldn't give away ride on mowers anymore. No one wants to pay more upfront and then all the fuel and servicing that they require each and every year. A replacement battery for mine is £55 so easily replaced. A set of blades is £10 and that should last a year. 

[joe90]

I liked my ride on mower 🤣

[Crofter]

Ok here's question, which will reveal my ignorance of how these things work.

 

I understand that for the non GPS type, you lay a boundary wire around the perimeter of the area to be mowed. 

 

What about if you have a narrow strip that the mower has to go down? Is there a limit to how close together two boundary wires can be? 

 

Asking because I don't just have one simple bit of lawn, I have a whole lot of different areas at different levels. I could have the mower trundle along the verge beside the driveway to get from one bit to another, but I need to know what the minimum width is.

[Bramco]

Take a look at one of the user guides on the Husqvarna website. They explain in detail how to set up the mowing areas where there are separate parts, as well as where there are corridors. I'm sure othe suppliers have similar guides.

 

Simon

[Declan52]

2 hours ago, Crofter said:

Ok here's question, which will reveal my ignorance of how these things work.

 

I understand that for the non GPS type, you lay a boundary wire around the perimeter of the area to be mowed. 

 

What about if you have a narrow strip that the mower has to go down? Is there a limit to how close together two boundary wires can be? 

 

Asking because I don't just have one simple bit of lawn, I have a whole lot of different areas at different levels. I could have the mower trundle along the verge beside the driveway to get from one bit to another, but I need to know what the minimum width is.

My kress will go through a corridor of 60cm.

[Crofter]

I think what I'm looking for is a mower that supports multiple guide wires? Trying to figure out what sort of price these start at. Husqvarna have a very nice 'choose your mower' feature but it's pointing me at the £2k+ segment... which is a bit out of budget...

[ProDave]

My neighbour had one last year.  I have no idea what make, but it was orange, round and about the size of a dustbin lid.  It was the type that had a wire around the perimiter and it turned round when it sensed the wire.

 

It took a lot of adaptations of the garden to make it work.  It would sense and turn round if it detected something like a solid border around a flower bed but it was no good at detecting imperfections in the ground like the rounded top of a boulder sticking through the ground and would get itself stranded and unable to move.  He eventually got the garden sorted to keep it mostly happy.

 

In use, it was completely random, no attempt to go up and down methodically cutting strips side by side.  It just trundled until it reached a perimiter or an obstacle, turned around and went another direction. Never turning 180 or 90 degrees.  So it eventually covered the whole lawn by the law of averages, but went over the same parts many times.

 

It would trundle back to it's charging house when it needed or when it rained.

 

He has not deployed it this year, I don't know why if he has given up with it or what.