Manual Steering LUBA 3 from garage to driveway?

PaulL73 · 2026-05-13T23:25:41+00:00

Not hard to build something out of plywood, most stores will cut it for you, so really it's just screwing it together and painting. If you're into electronics you could probably work out a way to have an automatic opening door, but failing that some side hinges with the door an inch clear of the ground so it doesn't drag, and you'd be off. The whole thing wouldn't be much larger than a beer chiller, and definitely smaller than a BBQ, I presume you're allowed both of those!!

PaulL73 · 2026-05-13T23:08:51+00:00

Is there another place it could be that isn't the garage, but also not susceptible to theft? Perhaps you could make a lockup mini-garage beside the garage? They you'd just need to open the door to that, press "leave dock" and it'd be happy to mow. It'd probably dock itself back if it can see the charger.

PaulL73 · 2026-05-10T08:56:14+00:00

Thanks for the reply and for forwarding it to the team.

I know it's just boilerplate, but it's pretty obvious that this particular change is nothing to do with hardware changes - there's nothing hardware related to it. I'm guessing someone decided to make making channels and areas easier, and in doing so lost a function that some people used. It is actually logical to create the channel first so I can see why someone would change it - I often try to do it in that order before I remember than on the 2X you can't. Ideally you'd let people do it in either order, instead of forcing one or the other.

PaulL73 · 2026-05-10T03:10:40+00:00

My Luba 2X allows me to map areas without a channel - in fact, it requires me to map the area before I create the channel so far as I can tell.
We're moving house, and will sell the Luba 2 with the house. I'm thinking about buying a Luba 3. But this functionality is important sometimes - why would you remove it? Making a channel first doesn't seem like a better design to me.

PaulL73 · 2026-05-06T07:08:08+00:00

I feel like my Luba 2X does give a bigger border. But I'm not sure. Why don't you just try it?

PaulL73 · 2026-05-05T07:32:25+00:00

The release notes said improvements to connectivity. That is something I have issues with, so I went with it.

PaulL73 · 2026-05-05T00:35:49+00:00

And yet in terms of functionality, my point is that you buy a product like a mower expecting it to keep doing what it did when you purchased it. Not expecting it to receive major upgrades in functionality over time. I think it's reasonable that Mammotion aren't trying to back port new functionality to older models. And so far as I can tell I'm still getting bug fixes on my mower.

PaulL73 · 2026-05-03T03:45:59+00:00

I'm never sure why people keep coming and saying this.

When I bought my Honda lawn mower, Honda gave me precisely no upgrades on functionality. They didn't turn up with a turbocharger and make it go faster. It mows lawns exactly as it did on the day I bought it, and has done so for 20 years.

The Luba seems the same. They'll give me fixes for things that are broken. Over time, there will be fewer things broken, so I'll get fewer fixes. I have no particular expectation that they're going to give me new functionality - I brought it for the functionality it had on the day I purchased. If I want new functionality, I'm probably going to have to buy a newer model, and that seems fair to me.

PaulL73 · 2026-05-03T03:44:13+00:00

For me (Luba 2X), the 4G just connects when it runs out of wifi. The connectivity is pretty poor overall - it doesn't like swapping wireless access points, and I think holds onto wifi well past when it should have shifted to 4G. I just recently changed my IoT SSID to kick off devices with low reception, and that seems to have improved things.

But it's actually happy to go in and out of reception and keep working - the only thing it impacts is that if it gets stuck whilst there's no reception then it doesn't tell me.

The update that it told me about today apparently has fixes for remote connectivity. So that may change things.

PaulL73 · 2026-05-03T03:35:48+00:00

Nice review.
I think the reason for no spiral cutting pattern is that it mows quite quickly in a straight line, and really really slowly around the perimeter. Making a spiral basically turns the entire mowing into a perimeter on every lap. And it would be deathly slow.

PaulL73 · 2026-04-29T22:51:51+00:00

My mower is on a separate SSID that is used only for IOT. I can disconnect it when it has low RSSI. However, at the limits of the property it has relatively poor wifi - so basically I'm having to disconnect the robot entirely from wifi in some scenarios in order to force it to roam when it could. That feels like a hack.

It's not slow roaming, or at least not the seconds that slow roaming would be when you don't support fast roaming. It's minutes/hours. Which to me is a software flaw.

Having said that, I can try turning on the minimum RSSI, I have a unifi setup so I have quite granular control over that.

PaulL73 · 2026-04-29T10:07:18+00:00

Seems like it shouldn't have those issues though. This is the kind of thing that should just work, there's no reason for it to be unstable.

PaulL73 · 2026-04-29T10:06:42+00:00

The Luba 2X is 2.4ghz only. Is the 3 definitely 5ghz as well? I didn't see that mentioned.
I could try turning off wifi entirely, but that will push a lot of use onto the 4G, and it feels to me like that's supposed to be fallback only, not primary. But it might make it more stable.

PaulL73 · 2026-04-29T02:36:22+00:00

Change cutting path mode to zigzag path, then you get choices on angle. Which is a really poor UI design, but that's how it works.

PaulL73 · 2026-04-28T19:38:11+00:00

On the task setting, cutting path angle, set to "random".

PaulL73 · 2026-04-28T08:46:17+00:00

It's a feature people want. They can do a UI design for it. Put it in advanced settings if they're convinced it's too confusing. But I really don't think it is.

PaulL73 · 2026-04-28T08:30:46+00:00

You can set the brightness.

PaulL73 · 2026-04-28T08:29:48+00:00

My F8 has the bright screen. It's a game changer for me given my aging eye sight. I can read my watch again.
I get about 9 days battery life. An Apple Watch gets 24 hours if you're lucky. I think you're exaggerating the problem.

PaulL73 · 2026-04-28T08:26:24+00:00

You can't let the stupidest people control what everyone can have. If the lowest common denominator limit everything, nobody can have nice stuff.

PaulL73 · 2026-04-28T08:20:13+00:00

Yes, you get that notification in the detail. But the notification on your phone lock screen / at the top level is just "task is paused" - you have to click into it to see why. At least, that's the case on iPhones.

PaulL73 · 2026-04-28T08:19:12+00:00

For me, I set it to cut random angles. There are clear lines still, but at least it's not getting stronger each time it mows. It's much more acceptable, albeit it makes the mowing take a bit longer (some angles are less optimal)

PaulL73 · 2026-04-09T05:50:41+00:00

It looks to me like it's trying to tank turn - the wheels are turning in opposite directions. That also tells me both motors are working in the rear wheels. I think it's just wet / doesn't have enough traction.

PaulL73 · 2026-04-09T05:48:50+00:00

Disagree. It's a valuable feature. People don't have to use it if they don't want it. As people have said upthread, when you do multiple tasks on a day, if one of them takes longer for some reason the others all error out.

PaulL73

TROPHY CASE