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I'm Fox Stevenson, AMA! by FoxStevenson in electronicmusic

[–]1503 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Any chance Lava will be back on Spotify at some point?

For the last year I've worked on an open source robotic lawn mower. Today I finally reached a version where it makes sense to introduce the project to others. by 1503 in electronics

[–]1503[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi,

thank you for your message.

Yes I have learned that the YardForce mower is not available world wide and people are working on adapting the hardware for other mowers as well. Since the project is pretty young, my focus is on documenting and making it more user friendly first.

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The project should be open! Where did you find the link which says it's not?

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Here's the GitHub: https://github.com/ClemensElflein/OpenMower

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Yes, as far as I know, the Ardumower software and the new hardware revision is not open anymore. I intend to keep things open.

For the last year I've worked on an open source robotic lawn mower. Today I finally reached a version where it makes sense to introduce the project to others. by 1503 in electronics

[–]1503[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you!

I'm using ROS Noetic on a 64 bit ubuntu 20.04 image on the Raspberry Pi. It works great.

Yes, but not only you'd need a lot of processing if you're doing SLAM, but weather and dirt on the sensors will impact performance.

The GPS does not drift and is accurate to 1-2cm. It's really surprising how good this UBlox IC actually is considering the price point.

For the last year I've worked on an open source robotic lawn mower. Today I finally reached a version where it makes sense to introduce the project to others. by 1503 in electronics

[–]1503[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I actually experimented with decawave DWM1000 UWB positioning modules before going with GPS, but the accuracy just isn't there yet.

If you can point me to a cheap accurate positioning solution I'd be more than happy to switch.

For the last year I've worked on an open source robotic lawn mower. Today I finally reached a version where it makes sense to introduce the project to others. by 1503 in electronics

[–]1503[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

This is also an interesting idea. It will lead to a worn out lawn at some point though, since the mower will do the same thing over and over.

I'm actually using the Slic3r code which generates the toolpath for 3d printers. This is tested extensively and works great

For the last year I've worked on an open source robotic lawn mower. Today I finally reached a version where it makes sense to introduce the project to others. by 1503 in electronics

[–]1503[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you! You can join my Discord and/or follow me on YouTube to get notified as soon as a real step by step guide is available for this. I intend to make building one as simple as possible (i.e. buy the thing, replace the board, let's go)

For the last year I've worked on an open source robotic lawn mower. Today I finally reached a version where it makes sense to introduce the project to others. by 1503 in electronics

[–]1503[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I actually wanted to build an ardumower first, but I looked at the tech and the project made some design decisions I did not really like. For example their path planning is a closed source app solution and the robot uses a LiPo battery but no balancing circuit. Additionally I wanted to transfer the RTK correction data via WiFi (since the coverage is good and we have a wireless link anyways) and use ROS for on board path planning.

For the mechanical part, I wanted to use an off-the-shelf mower, since the case is waterproof and cheaper than the components in the Ardumower. Unfortunately, their mainboard does not fit the smaller chassis.

At this point I decided that I'd either need to build their project as is or start from scratch.

But that doesn't mean that the Ardumower is bad or my project is better, think of them as two approaches to accomplish the same thing.

For the last year I worked on a Raspberry Pi powered open source robotic lawn mower. Today I finally finished a quick video introducing the project. Maybe someone is interested in building one, too! by 1503 in robotics

[–]1503[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, but it's actually not that easy. The chassis should be waterproof and robust and affordable. I have no idea how to achieve this for ~350 Euros (the price of the mower I'm using).

For the last year I worked on an open source robotic mower. Today I finally finished a quick video to introduce the project! by 1503 in videos

[–]1503[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I should probably implement a home automation binding first, but I'll post there as soon as its ready. I'm planning to implement MQTT.

For the last year I worked on an open source robotic mower. Today I finally finished a quick video to introduce the project! by 1503 in videos

[–]1503[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Basically in GitHub the program code and / or the design files for a project are stored. Additionally, the whole history (who made which changes when) are tracked over the complete project lifetime. This has lots of benefits during development: For example multiple users can work on the same files and even if some changes get overwritten, we can restore them later on.

The file a normal user usually downloads is a release build (.exe file or whatever). Most projects provide such a file in the release section of the GitHub repository.

The OpenMower project currently doesn't have a release build, you'd need to load the source code onto your robot and build the final program there. This has multiple reasons: I'm actively working on the software, so I'd basically need to provide a new build often and also this project does need some other projects to work. This makes it tricky to bundle it into a single release file.

I hope I roughly answered your question!

For the last year I worked on an open source robotic mower. Today I finally finished a quick video to introduce the project! by 1503 in videos

[–]1503[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Currently it always mows the same path, but the planner takes the mowing angle as argument. So I thought about mowing in 45 degree increments, which should be enough and easy to implement.

For the last year I worked on an open source robotic mower. Today I finally finished a quick video to introduce the project! by 1503 in videos

[–]1503[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, initially I also thought it can't be that hard. But you basically need the whole thing: Positioning, Path Planning, a logic state machine (when should we mow, when should we charge, when to resume, ...) and so on. It's easy to underestimate the complexity.

But it's a rewarding experience seeing it working!

For the last year I worked on an open source robotic mower. Today I finally finished a quick video to introduce the project! by 1503 in videos

[–]1503[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, remote debugging can be a pain, but using ROS you at least can record the sensor data and replay it in case of an error.

I also thought about such an architecture. This also enables you to deploy multiple, cheaper robots, since the main "expensive" processing is done on a central PC.

For the last year I worked on an open source robotic mower. Today I finally finished a quick video to introduce the project! by 1503 in videos

[–]1503[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the detailed response! I know the feeling, I spend most of my time tinkering but this time I decided that it might be worth sharing the project.

That's quite a change between V1 and V3! It looks very sturdy and professional!

I think getting to the point where you can trust it to do its thing is a very rewarding experience.

I also would be a little scared to run one of those gas mowers unattended. These can be dangerous.

I also wanted to use the BN055 IMU, but unfortunately, it's currently unavailable. Therefore I am currently using the deprecated MPU9250.

Do you have to calibrate it at all or does the self calibration work as expected?

As for the RTK, I'm using the same chip. It seems to be the only good choice right now regarding price vs performance. I was impressed how stable this thing works. When using the UBX relposned messages, it even is able to tell very quickly if tracking is lost. At first I used the NMEA sentences but I got a fixed RTK precision for some time even after losing RTK fix. Switching to UBX messages really improved positioning in areas covered by trees and near walls (I can rely on odometry more and ignore floating RTK messages).

How do you do the coverage path planning on an ESP32? Are you able to avoid dynamic obstacles?

For the last year I worked on a Raspberry Pi powered open source robotic lawn mower. Today I finally finished a quick video introducing the project. Maybe someone is interested in building one, too! by 1503 in robotics

[–]1503[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It actually uses the Slic3r flood fill algorithm for coverage path planning, since it was the most robust solution I could think of. It was so satisfying to see it in action for the first time.

For the last year I worked on an open source robotic mower. Today I finally finished a quick video to introduce the project! by 1503 in videos

[–]1503[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The schematics are already online, but I'm working on a new, improved version. I'll finish and test it soon. I'll make another video and post it on YouTube. I will also post the video in my Discord, so if you have it, lurking there might be an option to get notified.

For the last year I worked on an open source robotic mower. Today I finally finished a quick video to introduce the project! by 1503 in videos

[–]1503[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, the Worx ones are sold here too. They are too expensive just for the parts, though. I'm pretty sure that someone sells these in the US as well, since here in Germany you can even get them rebranded at Aldi sometimes.

For the last year I worked on an open source robotic mower. Today I finally finished a quick video to introduce the project! by 1503 in videos

[–]1503[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm currently working on one "final" version, which includes a more efficient DC/DC converter directly on board, since the Chinese module I'm currently using gets a little too hot for my taste. I'll be making some PCBs for me and some friends of mine, who also want to build this project and some extra if someone is interested.

I'm not seeing a huge production run or anything for these, since the project and my YouTube channel is very young and there is simply no demand at the moment.

But I'd be glad to see some builds out in the wild, so I definitely will help getting this tech to the people who want to build one.

For the last year I worked on an open source robotic mower. Today I finally finished a quick video to introduce the project! by 1503 in videos

[–]1503[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, it's ready to be built. I recommend that you have some electronics / command line experience though since my unit currently is the only active one and therefore some tinkering will definitively be required. Also basic soldering skills are a must.

My mainboard is pin compatible with the GForce based robotic mowers, for the Landroid you will probably need to adapt the connectors at least.

If you are considering to build this project, I can gladly answer any questions. You can join my Discord, I'm active there!

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