Would a like trim line work better or one of the add on things they have out. I love the idea very much. Plus really if people it will not cut the lawn that well with it moving around like that. Think of the Roomba Robot does just about the same thing it is doing and it does cover the whole room. Plus it does take some time. The only thing is if you use it most of the time it will just keep most of grass down. I thought about taking the hard wear out of a old one we have now.
@Deepblue466 They're great at cutting grass. What they're not so good at is hitting nongrassy stuff laying around in the yard. They break pretty easily.
It's an intresting idea, but not very practical. The random bumping could take hours to mow a lawn depending on the pattern. The battery would probably die by then. Also... razor blades? Common man that is just ghetto. A regular lawn mower blade which is 10x thicker has a hard time lasting more than 12 cuts.
@atomgonuclear We could find out, you know, whether or not it's a practical idea. We could, for example, build one and see how long it takes to cut grass, how long the battery lasts, how long the blades remain usefully sharp, etc.. Oh wait. I already did that. If only I had made a couple of YouTube videos about it, so we wouldn't have all these unanswered questions. Oh wait. I did that too.
that is not independent suspension that is straight axle suspension. independent suspension each wheel has its own suspension system i.e. a shock absorber A arm, wish bone suspention for each wheel like most front wheel drive cars today and 4x4 4wheelers keeping the chassis parallel with the ground straight axle suspension one wheel goes up the other goes down compared with the chassis
@XGCKrazyK Yes, you are right; I misused the term. What I should have said is simply that the front and rear axles are not required to be in the same plane. This allows all four wheels to stay on the ground even where the ground is uneven.
Neat idea! I think I would use dog fence as a grid though, to make it lots more efficient :-) a sensor in front of the mower could just follow the wire that you create a mowing pattern with :-) just a thought :-)
@MrBbgrump No, there is no inverter; the motors are DC , and are driven directly by the battery. (Well, there are relays to switch the motor direction, but I'm sure that's not what you mean by inverter.) I chose a cutting-blade motor so that it would spin at speed appropriate for the speed of the mower's motion, when driven by 12V.
What this baby really needs is a charging station it can plug itself into, then you have something completely autonomous. Also personally I would have gone with a reel mower type cutting blade, quieter (which is important since it runs for so long) and less velocity dependent, I think once those razors get blunt you will struggle to cut anything.
@Idiotsmakemesad A charging station (and the smarts to locate it) would be great!
The blade is actually pretty quiet -- much quieter than the drive anyway. A reel would be cool, but also a lot more work, I think.
One nice thing about razor blades is that they're thin, so there's a limit to how dull they can get. I don't actually notice as much difference between sharp blades and dull blades as I was expecting to see. Probably there'd be a greater difference in really thick grass.
@colorclocks Yeah right fair enough, I guess since its more designed for continuous maintenance than the periodic hack and slash my lawn enjoys, it doesn't need to cope with super thick grass.
I like how you've kept it relatively simple, I tend to make things over complicated which probably explains why I hardly ever finish anything. Oh and that electronic dog is genius, looks just like a real one! But I don't see why it needs a fence, can't you just program it to stay close to home ? ;-)
@Idiotsmakemesad The electronic dog was an epic fail, though I must admit that it does look pretty realistic. As a programmable device, though, it's pretty much a total loss. Its crap routine is stuck in an infinite loop, its lick routine is ignoring all targets except butt and face -- my wife's face. But at least the tail still works pretty well.
you did a nice job... i am going to take a robotics class for the last year of jr high coming up, so im gonna learn some stuff about this (hopefully). i'll start postings vids. oh and i subscribed.
So, you'd like a robot with blades going somewhere on purpose! Well, alrighty then, I'll see your "end is near" and raise you two horsemen of the apocalypse.
But seriously, steering would be an improvement. While I enjoy the simplicity and randomness of this robot's steering "algorithm", there are disadvantages: it's finicky, yard-size dependent, and insufficiently bulletproof.
Good luck with your mower. Be sure and post a video.
I mean, yeah it cuts the grass, but I bet it looks like shit with all of the random ass cut streaks everywhere. Save the time, money, and hassle and cut your lawn with a lawnmower >.>
You worry about random-ass cut streaks in your lawn? That's just adorable!
I'm more of a slob than that, but I must admit it's pleasant to look at a lawn cut by someone who really cares about the way their lawn looks, and you're right that folks who care about stuff like that don't want a robot mower.
Hi, im about to get a book on robotics and would like to start getting into this. Could you show us how to make this maybe? And could you post a video of your next mower when you done? Thanks in advance.( even if you don't)
What a pain in the ass, you want me to take the total the total number of hours in one year and divide it by the total number of hours in 4600 million years. Look guy I got better more important things to do with my life than waste it away impressing you.
(Blush!) I'm so flattered. I was actually going for "industrial hideous", but I'll settle proudly for "ghetto" (though I'm not exactly sure what it means).
Good point. However, I use only about 500 watt-hours of electricity to cut an area that my gas-powered lawn mower takes around a cup of gasoline (2000 watt-hour) to cut. Also, I'll bet a coal plant produces much less pollution per unit energy than a gas-powered mower.
I did get a solar panel for this guy, but it doesn't produce enough power to charge the battery in a reasonable time. I'm trying it out on my new, smaller mower. Stay tuned!
I posted the circuit at botmag. I've tried *many* times to post the URL, but none of my posts with a URL were accepted, for some reason. I'll describe the circuit.
Connect a 15 mH coil from the inverting input of a 311 comparator to ground. Connect an 18 nF capacitor in parallel with the coil. Connect a 25 mV reference to the noninverting input of the 311. Pull the output up with a 10 kOhm resistor.
This gets you a square wave when the fence is sensed, else a logic high.
That's three w's, followed by a dot, followed by botmag, followed by com, followed by a slash, followed by forum , followed by a slash, followed by showthread, followed by a dot, followed by php, followed by ?t=896
Sheesh, YouTube! Why do I have to write URL's in secret code, to get them accepted?
Awesome vid/mod/hack! I'm thinking about trying something like this myself. How did you size the motors for the cutting blades? Did you get a sense for the power required to cut through short and tall grass?
I looked for 12V motors that would run at around 4000 RPM. The first ones I tried burned up when they got into tall grass, so I got bigger motors (the size of a can of soup) with an internal temperature cutoff, and made the cutter a disk with blades sticking out only an inch or so. (So, in tall grass, the blade cuts what it can and slides over the rest, rather than stalling.)
Thanks for your comment and suggestion. I did buy a 15W solar panel for this guy, but it doesn't really put out 15W, even in the best case, and it takes 3 days to recharge. (The real problem here is that the battery is too heavy, so the mower wastes a lot of power.)
So, I made a smaller mower that I think can more practically be made solar. I haven't worked out the bugs yet, or the charging and sensing circuitry, but it has at least cut grass.
Good job man! It cracks me up to see it go. I would've loved to read your wife's mind when you told her you wanted to tear apart the barbie jeep to build a robot mower LOL!
Well, it wasn't *our* Barbie Jeep! A family in the next neighborhood was throwing one away, and said I could have it.
But anyway, I got to give my wife credit for putting up with all these little contraptions I like to play with. You know that while the lawn is being cut, it looks like some drunkard has been learning how to run a lawn mower. In the early days, the robot would run for a little while and then something would break, so I'd have to leave the lawn looking half cut by a drunk.
It takes about two or three hours to do a good job on the yard in the video, depending on how long the grass was to start with. After an hour and a half, most of the grass will have been cut, but several spots will have been missed, and many areas will have been visited only once. One pass is enough if the grass needs only an inch taken off, but it doesn't leave a clean cut if the grass is longer.
It uses a tuned LC circuit (a 15 mH inductor in parallel with an 18 nF capacitor). The voltage, induced by the perimeter wire, across this pair is compared (by an LM311) to a 25 mV reference voltage. When the inductor is within about six inches from the perimeter wire, the comparator output is a TTL square wave at the perimeter-wire frequency.
I didn't find it. I sort of gathered it from conversations at the following URL: (Here we go again) three w's, followed by a dot, followed by electro-tech-online, followed by a dot, followed by com
Thanks. I also had a lot of fun! Maybe even more fun than the kid who used to ride this thing. I got to break stuff, burn up motors, whack things with a hammer, and try out a lot of crazy bumper designs that didn't work at all. But mostly I got to drill holes. It's remarkable how many holes are contained in a lawn mower.
I need you guys to build for me, thegoodrobot@yahoo.com
Anyone interested?
smartstuff2buy 5 months ago
Would a like trim line work better or one of the add on things they have out. I love the idea very much. Plus really if people it will not cut the lawn that well with it moving around like that. Think of the Roomba Robot does just about the same thing it is doing and it does cover the whole room. Plus it does take some time. The only thing is if you use it most of the time it will just keep most of grass down. I thought about taking the hard wear out of a old one we have now.
csdesign73 5 months ago
Can u contact me about making me one. I have big plans and u will like them.
Thegoodrobot@yahoo.com
TJ
smartstuff2buy 7 months ago
I dont think utility knife blades would work to good at cutting grass
Deepblue466 9 months ago
@Deepblue466 They're great at cutting grass. What they're not so good at is hitting nongrassy stuff laying around in the yard. They break pretty easily.
colorclocks 9 months ago
@colorclocks does it leave little foot killers in the yard when they break off? ouch.
d1rtyd33z 2 months ago
It's an intresting idea, but not very practical. The random bumping could take hours to mow a lawn depending on the pattern. The battery would probably die by then. Also... razor blades? Common man that is just ghetto. A regular lawn mower blade which is 10x thicker has a hard time lasting more than 12 cuts.
atomgonuclear 10 months ago
@atomgonuclear We could find out, you know, whether or not it's a practical idea. We could, for example, build one and see how long it takes to cut grass, how long the battery lasts, how long the blades remain usefully sharp, etc.. Oh wait. I already did that. If only I had made a couple of YouTube videos about it, so we wouldn't have all these unanswered questions. Oh wait. I did that too.
colorclocks 9 months ago 7
@colorclocks I can guarantee,based on my theoretical analysis, that this system will absolutely not work. signed, designer of the
titanic
stuart1648 4 weeks ago
@atomgonuclear
stuart1648 4 weeks ago
those chairs 3:48 4:54 look a bit shaky
HolyGuyz 10 months ago
@HolyGuyz Looks to me like its a rocking bench.
Prior23 9 months ago
@Prior23 LOL, yeah!
HolyGuyz 9 months ago
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truehealthyproducts 10 months ago
This is a great invention...it doesn't look like it cuts very good ... I could just be the quality :)
CrNiivoR 10 months ago
Can I have one?? :)
ganja238 10 months ago
Comment removed
narinderman 10 months ago
Wow, this is very impressive!
spycell 10 months ago
that is not independent suspension that is straight axle suspension. independent suspension each wheel has its own suspension system i.e. a shock absorber A arm, wish bone suspention for each wheel like most front wheel drive cars today and 4x4 4wheelers keeping the chassis parallel with the ground straight axle suspension one wheel goes up the other goes down compared with the chassis
XGCKrazyK 11 months ago
@XGCKrazyK Yes, you are right; I misused the term. What I should have said is simply that the front and rear axles are not required to be in the same plane. This allows all four wheels to stay on the ground even where the ground is uneven.
colorclocks 11 months ago
that was wonderful
and it was very pleasant and relaxing to sit and watch it
freeNode5 11 months ago
Neat idea! I think I would use dog fence as a grid though, to make it lots more efficient :-) a sensor in front of the mower could just follow the wire that you create a mowing pattern with :-) just a thought :-)
crawldood 11 months ago
@crawldood A good thought. That would make the mower much more efficient. But it would be much more work. Always the tradeoff.
colorclocks 11 months ago
LOL, 1911 version makes everything awesome.
djsufferthing 11 months ago
lol , too funny , but at the same time its awesome. You need to fit a gps unit and programe some waypoints to cut more eficently. Good job ;)
millhouse12 11 months ago
this guy can make millions with this i bet
567nsr 11 months ago
that is very poor my friend. very poor indeed
neogastropoda1 11 months ago
Roomba zoomba and now uou made Groomba.
deelightfulco 11 months ago
it mows all fucked up .lol
metubegirl69er 11 months ago
did you have an invurter and if not how the hell did you not have one
MrBbgrump 1 year ago
@MrBbgrump No, there is no inverter; the motors are DC , and are driven directly by the battery. (Well, there are relays to switch the motor direction, but I'm sure that's not what you mean by inverter.) I chose a cutting-blade motor so that it would spin at speed appropriate for the speed of the mower's motion, when driven by 12V.
colorclocks 1 year ago
your site has an error so you mite want to fix that
MrBbgrump 1 year ago
@MrBbgrump I just checked the site and it's up now. Maybe they were having problems when you tried it.
colorclocks 1 year ago
Is this grass cuted with this barbie Jeep ?
Does it leave uncut grass areas?
silkius123 1 year ago
What this baby really needs is a charging station it can plug itself into, then you have something completely autonomous. Also personally I would have gone with a reel mower type cutting blade, quieter (which is important since it runs for so long) and less velocity dependent, I think once those razors get blunt you will struggle to cut anything.
Idiotsmakemesad 1 year ago
@Idiotsmakemesad A charging station (and the smarts to locate it) would be great!
The blade is actually pretty quiet -- much quieter than the drive anyway. A reel would be cool, but also a lot more work, I think.
One nice thing about razor blades is that they're thin, so there's a limit to how dull they can get. I don't actually notice as much difference between sharp blades and dull blades as I was expecting to see. Probably there'd be a greater difference in really thick grass.
colorclocks 1 year ago
@colorclocks Yeah right fair enough, I guess since its more designed for continuous maintenance than the periodic hack and slash my lawn enjoys, it doesn't need to cope with super thick grass.
I like how you've kept it relatively simple, I tend to make things over complicated which probably explains why I hardly ever finish anything. Oh and that electronic dog is genius, looks just like a real one! But I don't see why it needs a fence, can't you just program it to stay close to home ? ;-)
Idiotsmakemesad 1 year ago
@Idiotsmakemesad The electronic dog was an epic fail, though I must admit that it does look pretty realistic. As a programmable device, though, it's pretty much a total loss. Its crap routine is stuck in an infinite loop, its lick routine is ignoring all targets except butt and face -- my wife's face. But at least the tail still works pretty well.
colorclocks 1 year ago
you did a nice job... i am going to take a robotics class for the last year of jr high coming up, so im gonna learn some stuff about this (hopefully). i'll start postings vids. oh and i subscribed.
xLucky7s 1 year ago
If I didn't just buy a nice rider mower, I would totally build that!
bradrnstyle 1 year ago
hahah thats great! I love it!
bradrnstyle 1 year ago
Very nice job!
PaulErly 1 year ago
I would like to build one of these too, do you share any of your technical knowledge ' as far as schematics" and parts list ?
elwrencho1202 2 years ago 2
Yes. I've added an annotation to the video that gives the URL of a web site I made describing this mower.
colorclocks 1 year ago
robot with blades the end is near :O. I am going to build one with steering though
MrCoolguy6273 2 years ago
So, you'd like a robot with blades going somewhere on purpose! Well, alrighty then, I'll see your "end is near" and raise you two horsemen of the apocalypse.
But seriously, steering would be an improvement. While I enjoy the simplicity and randomness of this robot's steering "algorithm", there are disadvantages: it's finicky, yard-size dependent, and insufficiently bulletproof.
Good luck with your mower. Be sure and post a video.
colorclocks 2 years ago
grass is useless... you can't eat it. dig up your lawn and grow some vegetables!
NZtrillion 2 years ago
Vegetables are no fun to walk on.
colorclocks 2 years ago 8
I mean, yeah it cuts the grass, but I bet it looks like shit with all of the random ass cut streaks everywhere. Save the time, money, and hassle and cut your lawn with a lawnmower >.>
JustPlaneRC 2 years ago
You worry about random-ass cut streaks in your lawn? That's just adorable!
I'm more of a slob than that, but I must admit it's pleasant to look at a lawn cut by someone who really cares about the way their lawn looks, and you're right that folks who care about stuff like that don't want a robot mower.
colorclocks 2 years ago
Hi, im about to get a book on robotics and would like to start getting into this. Could you show us how to make this maybe? And could you post a video of your next mower when you done? Thanks in advance.( even if you don't)
Clankiscool 2 years ago
I bet it takes geologically long periods of time to mow your yard.
mgrande11 2 years ago
It takes about two hours to cut the yard in the video. With a manual mower, it takes me about 20 minutes to cut the same area.
colorclocks 2 years ago
do you even know what geological time means? one of the larger scales of time....
rawimpact 2 years ago
Of course, perhaps you should wiki Geologic time scale and research it, it is quite fascinating.
mgrande11 2 years ago
what's the closest integer in a geological time scale for two hours?
fucking idiot
rawimpact 2 years ago
What a pain in the ass, you want me to take the total the total number of hours in one year and divide it by the total number of hours in 4600 million years. Look guy I got better more important things to do with my life than waste it away impressing you.
mgrande11 2 years ago
im surprised those little blades can cut all of that haha
awesome
wwjoeyd 2 years ago
seriously talk about ghetto! : )
BMXKING4EVER09 2 years ago
(Blush!) I'm so flattered. I was actually going for "industrial hideous", but I'll settle proudly for "ghetto" (though I'm not exactly sure what it means).
colorclocks 2 years ago
that's soo cool. I found that really entertaining. If I understood circuts i'd probablly try this. but i dont... :(
renshy84 2 years ago
Very Cool!
RonCo1313 2 years ago
It's "green" because it uses a battery? And how do you recharge the battery? If you just plug it in to the wall, that's likely powered by coal...
andbruno 2 years ago
Good point. However, I use only about 500 watt-hours of electricity to cut an area that my gas-powered lawn mower takes around a cup of gasoline (2000 watt-hour) to cut. Also, I'll bet a coal plant produces much less pollution per unit energy than a gas-powered mower.
I did get a solar panel for this guy, but it doesn't produce enough power to charge the battery in a reasonable time. I'm trying it out on my new, smaller mower. Stay tuned!
colorclocks 2 years ago
Great work! Really nice.....
suequntf 2 years ago
anyone know were i can get the digram for electronic dog fence coils?? thanks
nutterireland 3 years ago
I posted the circuit at botmag. I've tried *many* times to post the URL, but none of my posts with a URL were accepted, for some reason. I'll describe the circuit.
Connect a 15 mH coil from the inverting input of a 311 comparator to ground. Connect an 18 nF capacitor in parallel with the coil. Connect a 25 mV reference to the noninverting input of the 311. Pull the output up with a 10 kOhm resistor.
This gets you a square wave when the fence is sensed, else a logic high.
colorclocks 2 years ago
That's three w's, followed by a dot, followed by botmag, followed by com, followed by a slash, followed by forum , followed by a slash, followed by showthread, followed by a dot, followed by php, followed by ?t=896
Sheesh, YouTube! Why do I have to write URL's in secret code, to get them accepted?
colorclocks 2 years ago
Hey,
Awesome vid/mod/hack! I'm thinking about trying something like this myself. How did you size the motors for the cutting blades? Did you get a sense for the power required to cut through short and tall grass?
rocketman889 3 years ago
I looked for 12V motors that would run at around 4000 RPM. The first ones I tried burned up when they got into tall grass, so I got bigger motors (the size of a can of soup) with an internal temperature cutoff, and made the cutter a disk with blades sticking out only an inch or so. (So, in tall grass, the blade cuts what it can and slides over the rest, rather than stalling.)
colorclocks 2 years ago
nice job . ,even better if you put a solar panel on it to recharge . thanks for posting 5*****
nutterireland 3 years ago
Thanks for your comment and suggestion. I did buy a 15W solar panel for this guy, but it doesn't really put out 15W, even in the best case, and it takes 3 days to recharge. (The real problem here is that the battery is too heavy, so the mower wastes a lot of power.)
So, I made a smaller mower that I think can more practically be made solar. I haven't worked out the bugs yet, or the charging and sensing circuitry, but it has at least cut grass.
colorclocks 3 years ago
Good job man! It cracks me up to see it go. I would've loved to read your wife's mind when you told her you wanted to tear apart the barbie jeep to build a robot mower LOL!
kraenee 3 years ago
Well, it wasn't *our* Barbie Jeep! A family in the next neighborhood was throwing one away, and said I could have it.
But anyway, I got to give my wife credit for putting up with all these little contraptions I like to play with. You know that while the lawn is being cut, it looks like some drunkard has been learning how to run a lawn mower. In the early days, the robot would run for a little while and then something would break, so I'd have to leave the lawn looking half cut by a drunk.
colorclocks 3 years ago
Ingenious-great stuff.This guy would have no trouble getting out of alcatraz.
saladdogger 3 years ago
Yeah, I would have *killed* for a chance to try escaping from Alcatraz.
colorclocks 3 years ago
how long does it take to eventually cut everything?
BikerTrashWolf 3 years ago
It takes about two or three hours to do a good job on the yard in the video, depending on how long the grass was to start with. After an hour and a half, most of the grass will have been cut, but several spots will have been missed, and many areas will have been visited only once. One pass is enough if the grass needs only an inch taken off, but it doesn't leave a clean cut if the grass is longer.
colorclocks 3 years ago
very nice
how does it sense the wire?
big5824 3 years ago
It uses a tuned LC circuit (a 15 mH inductor in parallel with an 18 nF capacitor). The voltage, induced by the perimeter wire, across this pair is compared (by an LM311) to a 25 mV reference voltage. When the inductor is within about six inches from the perimeter wire, the comparator output is a TTL square wave at the perimeter-wire frequency.
colorclocks 3 years ago
Can you tell me were you found the schematic?
trkeenan2 3 years ago
I didn't find it. I sort of gathered it from conversations at the following URL: (Here we go again) three w's, followed by a dot, followed by electro-tech-online, followed by a dot, followed by com
colorclocks 2 years ago
Awesome use of old junk. You saved 2000
WallyShitter 3 years ago
Thanks. I also had a lot of fun! Maybe even more fun than the kid who used to ride this thing. I got to break stuff, burn up motors, whack things with a hammer, and try out a lot of crazy bumper designs that didn't work at all. But mostly I got to drill holes. It's remarkable how many holes are contained in a lawn mower.
colorclocks 3 years ago
Clever.
Be safe out there.
OIIIIIIIO
thejeepchannel 3 years ago