I love Luba (not the singer)

Entry posted by EricBall in Other Tech June 21

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I love my robot lawnmower - a Mammotion LUBA AWD 3000. The front yard in our new house is about a half acre - so not huge but significantly larger than the one at the old house. It also has an ~30% slope in the middle of it - not something I'd like to push or ride a mower up, down or across.

But then we discovered the world of robot lawnmowers. We went with LUBA because it has AWD (no problem with the slope) and uses Differential GPS for mapping and positioning (rather than the older style of random bouncing inside a perimeter wire). And it's great - after mapping out the yard (along with any obstacles like bushes) you just tell it to start and it mows in straight lines until the yard is done. If its battery gets low, it returns to base, recharges, then goes back out to finish the job. Talk about a time saver!

Is it perfect? Sadly no. Because it uses DGPS, both the robot and the GPS antenna (which can be mounted anywhere) both have to see a large number of GPS type satellites in common to provide inch accurate positioning. This means it has difficulty working where the robot can't see a decent amount of sky (or the sky seen by both the GPS antenna and the robot). So while it works great in the front yard, it can't mow the side or back yard because the sky is blocked by the house on one side and tall trees on the other. (Fortunately those areas aren't "living areas" so I can do those occasionally with a string trimmer.) Similarly, it can have problems under low hanging branches. Finally it won't do borders and edges as closely and cleanly as a person - but that's a quick job with a string trimmer.

Some of these issues might be fixed by the LUBA 2 which also has video cameras. There are also other robot mowers on the market, each with their own pros & cons and pricetags. (No, a robot mower is not cheap; unless you are comparing it to a ride-on mower.)

One other disadvantage is the phone app used to program the mower requires an internet connection for authentication. On the one hand that means a thief can't use the mower (not that they would know that before they stole it), but it also means that the mower stops working if Mammotion goes out of business.

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SpiceWare 9,121

Posted June 25

Nice!

My old Roomba vacuum died recently, replaced it with a new one that mapped the house. Did a pretty good job at mapping, just named 1 room incorrectly, and split my office in 2^* I now say things like "hey siri, clean the TV room" to start it after I've checked the room to make sure there's nothing on the floor.

My office is a bedroom with the optional office upgrade, which is basically the addition of french doors that open into the formal living room as seen on the right side of the photo below. The original bedroom door is to the left of the bookcase that's visible behind the Dyson fan. Normally the original door and closet are removed when opting for the office upgrade, but that would have left this as a 2 bedroom house so both remained in place.

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