Minding the robot

[kolaf]

In the belief that not everything has to be overcomplicated (ref my other post about hacking a water timer), let me share my most recent project with you.

I have a robotic lawnmower that covers a pretty complicated lawn of about 3500 m². Being only a simple robot it tends to get stuck here and there, and sometimes it has to take the long way home with too little fuel. In these cases it would be good to get a notification so that I could go out and look for him when he gets stuck, but be pretty confident that he is working correctly otherwise.

Enter my sensor.

It is nothing fancy, simply a reed switch connected to the interrupt pin (number three) on my moteino and a battery pack. The magnets for the switch is mounted on the lawnmower. Domoticz now knows when he is home and when he is out. Knowing how long he usually works for I can now easily set up an alarm which fires whenever he has been away too long (which means that he is probably stuck, or God forbid, stolen).

Again, it is nothing fancy, but it works :-). I hope you guys forgive me for my casings and wiring. I am much more a software guy than a hardware guy, and it shows

[Jan Gatzke]

@kolaf said:

nd there, and sometimes it has to take the long way home with too little fuel. In these cases it would be good to get a notification so that I could go out and look for him when he gets stuck, but be pretty confident that he is working correctly otherwise.

Enter my sensor.

Cool idea. You could extend it by a GPS module.

[kolaf]

Let's not over complicate things, at least not yet

[Sparkman]

@kolaf said:

Let's not over complicate things, at least not yet

Over complicate things, that's why we are here isn't it

A GPS would be a great way to let you know it's stolen

Cheers
Al

PS Great project by the way. Husqvarna hasn't released their robotic mowers in Canada yet, so my wife will still have to mow manually for a while longer

[Jan Gatzke]

And how do you know where your wife is and whether she got stuck?

[kolaf]

Simple. We share our locations through Google, so we always can see where each other are