Robot Lawn Mowers - Educate me

[john_smith]

That's what i'm going to have to mow. So three "zones" The path behind the house will be a gravel path.

The m500plus worx landroid with an acs looks good?



Thank you.

 

[sovietspybob]

I can only speak from my experience of my Husqvarna, ideally get one with 2 guide wires and you should be ok.

Where are you thinking of having the base station? Are all the areas connected with continuous grass or at least hard surface as you mention gravel? They'll happily trundle over slabs to get to another area but won't deal with gravel at all.

With the Husqvarna ones you could get away with a single guide wire model as you can get it to follow the boundary wire for a set distance to create more zones, i think mine can have 6 zones even though it's only capable of 2 guide wires.

What you can also which which is what i've done to get to a 2nd isolated area, run the boundary wires bundled together then make a 2nd area. You have to physically pick the mower up and carry it over but that can work for places which you couldn't otherwise connect with a grass corridor.

Otherwise, you won't regret it my Automower is one of the the best things i've ever bought.

 

[john_smith]

Thank you. Good info. Would you mind letting me know what mower you have, cost and supplier?

Base station can go at either 80m or 155m on my picture.

All areas are all accessable but wont be 100% grass. The section between 40m and 50m on my picture will be a path (surface to be determined) I have a whacker plate so it can be packed firm if i use a fine gravel.

"garden" currently looks like this, so nothing is ready for mowing yet....but I want to be ready

 

[Efour]

I have a McCuloch, made by Husqvarna, single guide wire rated upto 800m2. Boundary wire is about 450m.
So quite a large area. We only got it going this season but ive learned a lot from trial and error.

2 guide wire models are very expensive.... Ideally i needed a 2 guidewire jobby but we compromised and went with the cheaper.
it still works, but its set to cut nearly all the time, it finds its way everywhere, but it would have been better with 2 wires.

if you put your base station in 1 of the more remote parts of the garden then you can forget about running a guide wire

80 looks good then a long guide to 150 is possible.

They say that they can negotiate small corridors but id try and give at least 1m in width at the smallest path when following a guide out/in cable. They use a randomized distance to the right of the cable out, left in, as not to leave tracks and wear and tear on the surface.

Mine has to negotiate a small area/corridor to get out into the main garden lawn and it took a lot of trial and error to get it through smoothly. So My advice go close to a boundary wire in a corridor with the guide cable, mines less than 20cm, but that is fine for my model.

I'm not sure how its going to do with a gravel path though... and you have to boundary and guide cable there too....

Mine has a ACS system......


btw thats not a video

 

[john_smith]

Thank you.

Apologies. I dont know what the guide wire means?

I was inder the impression you did your boundry and the mower just "bounces" around inside it and via chaos will cut everything.

 

[john_smith]

Answered my own question.

"
4. Lay the guide wire
The purpose of the guide wire is to lead the Husqvarna Automower® back to the charging station when needed. Connect one end to the station and place the wire straight across the farthest part of your garden so that the robotic mower can easily find it. The other end is attached to the boundary wire where they intersect. Both the boundary and the guide wire are then connected to the charging station."

 

[john_smith]

As i've been looking at the Worx landroid, this explains why I didnt know about the guide wire.

"Thanks to the AIA intelligent navigation technology, Landroid has the unique capability to evenly mow complex lawns and reach any zone going through narrow corridors (60cm minimum width) without the need of any extra guiding wire."

 

[Efour]

Yeah it's a much more advanced model than these Husqvarna older school ones.

Probably more like a robot vacuum cleaner in that it maps out the garden and creates a template to work within.

Mine just bumps around. I'd much rather have a smarter mower.

 

[sovietspybob]

Mines a Husqvarana Automower 420, the 2018 model i think so it's got dual guide wires.

I paid £2000 fully installed about 3 years ago now.

This is how mine is laid out, red is the boundary wire with the dock being where the car was parked.

Blue is the only guide wire i'm using currently so it can get into the orchard as that's got a 1.5m entrance
The purple dashed line is where i'll put the 2nd guide wire but i need to sort that bit of the garden out as it's not fit for the mower just yet.
Areas 1 and 2 are islands with no means for the mower to get to them so i pick it up and put it there one a week to mow for 90 minutes to keep on top of it.

I wouldn't think even compacted gravel would work for a mower, you'll need either grass or slabs.

The newer GPS mapping style ones are better at getting around a really complex garden but fwiw Husqvarna still use guide wires even on their high end models so i'd wager there's still some value in them. Plus they're no more effort to lay as you're having to do the whole boundary wire anyway so i wouldn't take that as a must have feature or be put off by those still with them.

For me at the time i could have got a smaller 300 series GPS mapping unit or the bigger 400 series 'dumb' one, i'm happy i went the route i did as it's just generally bigger and can do a bigger area so it's not mowing flat out 24/7. It finds its way round to every bit of the garden it can access and the grass does look amazing all the time. The novelty of it mapping would wear off pretty quick i'd have though as all that matters is the end result, mapping strikes to me as more of a gimmick than anything.

I currently having it going from 5am-9am then again from 7pm-11pm each day which keeps on top of it really nicely and allows you to use the garden in the day. I remove the morning mow time once we start getting frosts as the grass will be growing slower then.

 

[BUDFORCE]

Get the Mrs to do it.

 

[john_smith]

*snip*

Great info. Thank you.