When they work, they are amazing.
Robotic lawn mowers
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Soldato
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Yep. Tried the "am radio trick". no good. Pulled the whole cable up and relaid it. I took the oppertunity to move the base station to the complete opposite end of the garden. It should make the ower more efficient as the base is now in the larger part of the garden.
I then tried to find the brake in the cable....I eventually found a tiny nick, the mower must have caught it, and the cable had completely corroded away inside.
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- Joined
- 13 May 2003
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- 34,709
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- Warwickshire
My Worx Landroid started failing to find the charging house, getting lost in the lawn, etc. Only obvious symptom was strange LED light behaviour on the charging station, mainly rapidly flashing green light.
From Googling the problem it sounded like the transformer was the likely culprit, so I sent Worx a YouTube video of the symptoms and they shipped me a replacement two days later.
Luckily I extended the warranty (for free) when I bought it to 3 years, so the replacement was foc.
Just posting this in case it helps anyone with the same problem, as I had started to suspect the boundary wire.
P.S. the new transformer sorted it.
From Googling the problem it sounded like the transformer was the likely culprit, so I sent Worx a YouTube video of the symptoms and they shipped me a replacement two days later.
Luckily I extended the warranty (for free) when I bought it to 3 years, so the replacement was foc.
Just posting this in case it helps anyone with the same problem, as I had started to suspect the boundary wire.
P.S. the new transformer sorted it.
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Soldato
- Joined
- 19 Oct 2010
- Posts
- 3,576
Excellent service. That's good.
Edit, just checked I did the same....coming up 3 years v. soon!
Purchase Date: 2021-08-24
The warranty period expires on 2024-08-24
Edit, just checked I did the same....coming up 3 years v. soon!
Purchase Date: 2021-08-24
The warranty period expires on 2024-08-24
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Just set up a Segway Navimow i105e
We only have 2 small lawns, one is 55-60m2, the other 30-35m2 and I wanted something that you can define both areas and pathways between, also storing the charging base out the way on the patio, so vision/gps based mowers seemed a good idea (if not much more expensive).
I was toying up the Mammotion Yuka, but for the £1450 starting price (£2150 if you get the full package), and the size of lawns, the fairly newly released Navimow seemed the right VFM and is reviewing very well, even against the Luba2.
It's an RTK/Vision based platform and has a nice ride on boundary feature that should be ideal for our part grass/patio and grass/brick edging.
Setup was a breeze, the RTK GPS antenna I attached to a fence post with pipe clips rather than the supplied ground spikes, then just powered it all up and setting a boundary was as easy as just driving it around the lawns, defining pathways between lawns and the base and that's it.
I only realised how you are supposed to do the 'ride on boundary' mapping after I'd set it off mowing, so that will need to be done next time.
Even though the mower had < 50% battery by the time I'd mapped it a couple of times and messed around, so sent it out doing it's first cut of 20mm on the basis I'm away for a week now, so needed it cut fairly short. The mower did most of it, but at 15% battery, returned to base, charged and headed back out..
Just based on the first cut:
Positives:
+ Easy setup, the firmware update and mapping was painless.
+ Effectively silent except the noise of blade cutting the grass.
+ The vision system is impressive, the Mrs had washing hanging up and we use two small temporary poles to support the line if we are doing a large load, the mower had no issues cutting close to them but avoiding touching them.
+ Despite thinking it's low on battery, it did the right thing, tootled back to based, charged and went back out, then came back to charge!
+ The pathway feature is part of the reason for buying it, having it navigate a defined path around the patio to the other grass and back to the charger is great.
+ No issues having the charger on the patio hidden by the side of a storage box. I just used a cheap rubber mat underneath and cable-tied the base to it and it seems well planted.
+ The min cut height of 20mm is good, despite having already cut the grass to the same 20mm of our corded Bosch, the (presumably) shorter wheelbase meant it cut the grass more evenly.
+ The size is perfect, very compact.
+ The wheels are excellent, the castor wheels are at the rear and the rubber treads etc make it very capable going over some bumpy bits/bricks edging and slate sections getting to the patio.
Negatives
- It wasn't clear that you need to define the boundary type when mapping, so I have a 10cm uncut bit of grass around the border at the moment, and you can't edit it afterwards since you select the boundary type and remote control the mower exactly as you want it to ride on that boundary, so can only be done with a full re-mapping.
- Minor niggle with most 'connected devices', but its 2.4Ghz WiFi only, which I have some (unexplained) dead spots. the closest AP (outdoors) has a single storey extension roof/one wall to get through and I have plenty of 5ghz signal strength from it on my phone but only 33% signal on 2.4g if I put my phone were the charging station is. I have other IOT devices outside that also struggle on that side of the garden for the same reasons, ideally in this day/age having 5Ghz wifi would be helpful just to give me some flexibility.
- Battery is more than enough for us, but it seems obvious there is no way 500m2 on a single charge is remotely feasible.
[edit] OK, 30 seconds on google and it seems mowers are rated on their mowing area per day and multiple charges are expected.. Over on Reddit a rep said it's rated for 60 mins of mowing which is approx 100m2+, so that ties in!
The RRP is £949, but £50 voucher and 4% cashback meant it cost £861, which is expensive for just a 'mower' but for what it offers, it seems good..
We only have 2 small lawns, one is 55-60m2, the other 30-35m2 and I wanted something that you can define both areas and pathways between, also storing the charging base out the way on the patio, so vision/gps based mowers seemed a good idea (if not much more expensive).
I was toying up the Mammotion Yuka, but for the £1450 starting price (£2150 if you get the full package), and the size of lawns, the fairly newly released Navimow seemed the right VFM and is reviewing very well, even against the Luba2.
It's an RTK/Vision based platform and has a nice ride on boundary feature that should be ideal for our part grass/patio and grass/brick edging.
Setup was a breeze, the RTK GPS antenna I attached to a fence post with pipe clips rather than the supplied ground spikes, then just powered it all up and setting a boundary was as easy as just driving it around the lawns, defining pathways between lawns and the base and that's it.
I only realised how you are supposed to do the 'ride on boundary' mapping after I'd set it off mowing, so that will need to be done next time.
Even though the mower had < 50% battery by the time I'd mapped it a couple of times and messed around, so sent it out doing it's first cut of 20mm on the basis I'm away for a week now, so needed it cut fairly short. The mower did most of it, but at 15% battery, returned to base, charged and headed back out..
Just based on the first cut:
Positives:
+ Easy setup, the firmware update and mapping was painless.
+ Effectively silent except the noise of blade cutting the grass.
+ The vision system is impressive, the Mrs had washing hanging up and we use two small temporary poles to support the line if we are doing a large load, the mower had no issues cutting close to them but avoiding touching them.
+ Despite thinking it's low on battery, it did the right thing, tootled back to based, charged and went back out, then came back to charge!
+ The pathway feature is part of the reason for buying it, having it navigate a defined path around the patio to the other grass and back to the charger is great.
+ No issues having the charger on the patio hidden by the side of a storage box. I just used a cheap rubber mat underneath and cable-tied the base to it and it seems well planted.
+ The min cut height of 20mm is good, despite having already cut the grass to the same 20mm of our corded Bosch, the (presumably) shorter wheelbase meant it cut the grass more evenly.
+ The size is perfect, very compact.
+ The wheels are excellent, the castor wheels are at the rear and the rubber treads etc make it very capable going over some bumpy bits/bricks edging and slate sections getting to the patio.
Negatives
- It wasn't clear that you need to define the boundary type when mapping, so I have a 10cm uncut bit of grass around the border at the moment, and you can't edit it afterwards since you select the boundary type and remote control the mower exactly as you want it to ride on that boundary, so can only be done with a full re-mapping.
- Minor niggle with most 'connected devices', but its 2.4Ghz WiFi only, which I have some (unexplained) dead spots. the closest AP (outdoors) has a single storey extension roof/one wall to get through and I have plenty of 5ghz signal strength from it on my phone but only 33% signal on 2.4g if I put my phone were the charging station is. I have other IOT devices outside that also struggle on that side of the garden for the same reasons, ideally in this day/age having 5Ghz wifi would be helpful just to give me some flexibility.
- Battery is more than enough for us, but it seems obvious there is no way 500m2 on a single charge is remotely feasible.
[edit] OK, 30 seconds on google and it seems mowers are rated on their mowing area per day and multiple charges are expected.. Over on Reddit a rep said it's rated for 60 mins of mowing which is approx 100m2+, so that ties in!
The RRP is £949, but £50 voucher and 4% cashback meant it cost £861, which is expensive for just a 'mower' but for what it offers, it seems good..
Last edited:
- Joined
- 13 May 2003
- Posts
- 34,709
- Location
- Warwickshire
2.4GHz has a greater range than 5GHz.
You are correct (longer wavelengths pass through materials easily), the issue is very unique to my setup, for some reason I have these 2.4Ghz dead spots, I tried to fill in one outside using an outdoor AP (I'm running TP Link OMADA SDN Stuff) and keep checking the environment using WiFi Analyser or similar apps and where as I get full garden coverage with 5Ghz, I can't with 2.4Ghz (courtyard area) Not sure if Beam Forming or other technologies are at play that optimise for 5GHz better than 2.4Ghz.. I just wish devices had both and similar performance/coverage as I do on my mobile phones then I wouldn't have to chase issues so much.
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In other news I was hell bent on building a bespoke mower 'garage' to keep it out of the worst of the weather and also not look so obvious sat on the patio'd area.. The official 'garage' is a bit open still and £150 (and out of stock!)
So I've been mulling it over whilst on holiday and on getting back this weekend started designing it in CAD, however, it suddenly dawned on me that whilst away I had placed the mower on its base in the bottom of one of the some new storage units we bought (We bought 2 for the inordinate amount of furniture cushions we have, but it turns out 90% of the cushions fitted in one unit, so the other was largely empty..) which led to an epiphany of just converting the storage unit to be a partial garage and partial storage.
The unit is the newer Keter deco-coat series:
Being a larger 757L version, the mower actually only needs about 1/4 of the unit: (i.e. half the floor space, half the height)
Before modifying anything, I just disassembled the unit, removed the entire end panel, then just placed the charging station/mower in and progressively checked it could get a GPS lock and still have WiFi access and could have course navigate in/out the unit.. and then added the lid back on, rechecked etc..
I did have to move the unit to allow an 'excellent' GPS lock status, but once done I then just cut the end panel in approx half and used a multi-tool to remove the bottom lip on that end, attaching a cut down rubber mat to allow a smooth transition to the patio:
I then cut the remaining end panel down slightly, slapped on 4 magnetic catches and used two left over kitchen unit knobs to give me a temporary 'door' that can be easily put in place to close off the box:
Since we manually schedule the mowing (to ensure we check for Dogs eggs first!), this will do for now, however, next steps are:
1. use some 20mm x 38mm battons to make a small internal 'box' and clad it in clear perspex (using Velcro on the top section for access) and silicon it to the storage container so we effectively seal off the 'garage' part from the rest of the box to allow us to use 3/4 of it for storage again..
2. Motor drive the garage door 'panel' so it will open/close with the mower.. The main reason for making it motorised is just space, I will only need a small hinge assembly and stepper motor to do that, although I could use the same counter-weight systems used by others for a passive door mechanism, I'll wait and see.. Either way the knob's will then disappear and thus make it look more seamless!
The process of moving the charging station is easy, there is an app feature just for it, and it takes 30 seconds, so nice and user friendly..
And as a bonus, there was a firmware update/app update that gives some useful new features that are clearly trying to get more parity with other brands, but the one I most welcomed is the app based remote control (obvious feature lacking at launch!).. this means that whilst I've got it nicely riding on the boundary for 50% of the lawn there is some brick edges sections that don't have enough material (slate in this case) the other side to allow it to straddle it automatically (there is the height difference and also the fact the slate tends to move under the wheels), so I've set it to be more conservative on those edges and will just manually control it once a week to get that last 5cm or so and I might top up the slate or change the material (smaller gravel works perfectly) since the ride on boundary feature should in theory then get 100% of the grass and need only very occasionally manual lawn edging using the strimmer.
So I've been mulling it over whilst on holiday and on getting back this weekend started designing it in CAD, however, it suddenly dawned on me that whilst away I had placed the mower on its base in the bottom of one of the some new storage units we bought (We bought 2 for the inordinate amount of furniture cushions we have, but it turns out 90% of the cushions fitted in one unit, so the other was largely empty..) which led to an epiphany of just converting the storage unit to be a partial garage and partial storage.
The unit is the newer Keter deco-coat series:
Being a larger 757L version, the mower actually only needs about 1/4 of the unit: (i.e. half the floor space, half the height)
Before modifying anything, I just disassembled the unit, removed the entire end panel, then just placed the charging station/mower in and progressively checked it could get a GPS lock and still have WiFi access and could have course navigate in/out the unit.. and then added the lid back on, rechecked etc..
I did have to move the unit to allow an 'excellent' GPS lock status, but once done I then just cut the end panel in approx half and used a multi-tool to remove the bottom lip on that end, attaching a cut down rubber mat to allow a smooth transition to the patio:
I then cut the remaining end panel down slightly, slapped on 4 magnetic catches and used two left over kitchen unit knobs to give me a temporary 'door' that can be easily put in place to close off the box:
Since we manually schedule the mowing (to ensure we check for Dogs eggs first!), this will do for now, however, next steps are:
1. use some 20mm x 38mm battons to make a small internal 'box' and clad it in clear perspex (using Velcro on the top section for access) and silicon it to the storage container so we effectively seal off the 'garage' part from the rest of the box to allow us to use 3/4 of it for storage again..
2. Motor drive the garage door 'panel' so it will open/close with the mower.. The main reason for making it motorised is just space, I will only need a small hinge assembly and stepper motor to do that, although I could use the same counter-weight systems used by others for a passive door mechanism, I'll wait and see.. Either way the knob's will then disappear and thus make it look more seamless!
The process of moving the charging station is easy, there is an app feature just for it, and it takes 30 seconds, so nice and user friendly..
And as a bonus, there was a firmware update/app update that gives some useful new features that are clearly trying to get more parity with other brands, but the one I most welcomed is the app based remote control (obvious feature lacking at launch!).. this means that whilst I've got it nicely riding on the boundary for 50% of the lawn there is some brick edges sections that don't have enough material (slate in this case) the other side to allow it to straddle it automatically (there is the height difference and also the fact the slate tends to move under the wheels), so I've set it to be more conservative on those edges and will just manually control it once a week to get that last 5cm or so and I might top up the slate or change the material (smaller gravel works perfectly) since the ride on boundary feature should in theory then get 100% of the grass and need only very occasionally manual lawn edging using the strimmer.
I was thinking about getting one of these to maintain our garden but was wondering how it deals with leaves and twigs on the lawn or if it has problems with trees blocking GPS? We are down in Devon so warm and wet and everything grows too fast and we have a lot of trees bordering the lawn (and its all a bit slopey, and irregular shaped). My phone can see a lot of GPS satellites according to an app (GPSTest on Android) when I am trying things out in the garden, even under the biggest trees, so I am hopeful but it would be good to hear of your experience. The other thing they drop a lot of twigs will the mower just go over them or will it get snagged up? Would the AI steer around overhanging plants on a border if they had drooped onto the lawn? Keen to hear real world opinion. Thanks Roger
GPS signal lock is good, there are two GPS modules, one on the Mower, one on a Fixed stake, the fixed stake can be within 10M of the charging base so easy to put in open sky, the mower has been good in getting a lock fairly close to the house so doesn't seem too fussy and when its mowing will augment a weak GPS signal with the vision system, so if the GPS Test can see plenty of satellites, I'd be confident the mower will be fine.
In terms of borders/avoiding things, you can define any border you want, tell it various things to avoid, but on top of that, the vision system seems OK at avoiding things it might get stuck on, we have very small washing line poles that it easily detects, as it has fallen socks off the washing line, and dog toys and also hanging flowers over the border.. In fact you can tell it to ignore the vision system in an area specifically if you want it to brush through some over hanging plants.
Obstacle avoidance is good, but as with all these mowers, there are some smaller objects of the right size it will not recognise/see, but generally it's pretty good..
As is the ability to deal with irregular lawns and slopes, it's rated to 30 degrees which is fairly good.
However, if you want a much larger mower with the ability to deal with really rough stuff and might have more chance chewing up larger twigs, the Mammotion Luba 2 AWD gets excellent reviews, as does its smaller brother, the Yuka (which can also clear up leaves and dump them in a specific place), but they cost 2x+..
There are plenty of youtube reviews of the Navimow, do a search for i105, i108, i110 , these are all identical, the only difference being the size of battery and housing colour, the actual wheels/motor/abilities are all shared otherwise and you can see plenty of reviews against the Luba 2, which is a better mower, however costs over double!
I bought one yesterday and spent most of today buying and running conduit for cables around the garden. The GPS on a stake I have mounted up on the roof which seems to be fine. I was hoping to have the dock under a raised decking next to the house. However, it refuses to start the mapping as it has little gps under the deck. How do you manage to get GPS signal with the mower in a your Keter box? I don't have a lot of open sky options withing 10m of a main outlet. The app which you seem to have to use to suggest positions for the GPS pole and base suggests the best placement in miles from the power which is kind of mandatory... Seems a bit flakley so far and it hasnt even had to start cutting.
GPS signal can get through plastics, I've had GPS antenna's buried in my Car's dashboard and still got a lock!
I did have 'issues' getting a GPS lock just moving it around the patio, never mind in the storage box, however, I think there is a bug or feature that meant on powering the base/mower up, it would sometimes sit there not getting a lock, however, in the app, I used the lock test to see what was going on and it always seemed to get a lock (well 90% of the time), and once locked, stayed locked!
If you have the navimow, in the App, it's under the EFLS 2.0 -> Satellite Signal Analyzer -> Lock Time (tab)..
Also, I found in the afternoon I could see more satellites and it also got a lock more often..
Yes, the app is a bit hot and miss. Doesn't seem to work as I expect and I always end up backtracking and doing things again. I have managed to move the dock 20cm and it's now perfectly happy. So I set it off on its first cut and was pretty impressive in both cut and navigation. Our garden has a lot of slope, large trees on the boundary and plants in the lawn. Surprised it did a first pass without problems. Now need to see if i can get a ramp built to the rest of the garden. Thanks for the advice.
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- 16 Aug 2005
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- 857
- Location
- Cardiff
Looking into picking one of these up...
I'm looking at a 'no wires' one. What's the latest ones I should be looking at? Any real world experiences without the wires and how good they are?
I'm looking at a 'no wires' one. What's the latest ones I should be looking at? Any real world experiences without the wires and how good they are?