I’ve been following the project for a year now and Clemens Elflein has actually managed to get the topic off the ground professionally. Recently, his kit is available, with which you can upgrade a cheap Yardforce robotic mower to GPS support. This eliminates the need to lay boundary wires.
$490 AUD for the kit, and I still need to buy the original mower to modify…
The original mower will cost $1165 AUD
So $1655 for the whole solution…
Pretty sure it’s targeted primarily at a small group of enthusiasts so with a low production volume, the high price makes perfect sense. If that’s too much for you, just don’t buy it :P
Are you sure with the price of the lawn mower? The “yardforce 500 classic” should cost ~300 EUR = ~495 AUD mate.
If you are interested in RTK and the practical aspects of the hardware use, check out https://discourse.agopengps.com for a bunch of farmers that use it on an opensource autosteer system.
I also have a group buy running there for the Micro ardusimple units going that’s waiting to hit 50 units for a substantial discount if you’re in no hurry to get one for your project.
If only I had a yard, or a house or a flat or…
I’ve been following this for a while because even though I have a small lawn, lawncare is easily one of my least favorite activities.
I also would suggest thi8s gets reposted to other tool/gardening/homeowner related subs too.
Do you have a link to this new kit?
Very cool! I was trying to work out if you multiple rtk stations (or if that was supported) for instances when a lawn wraps around a house. Looked on discord but not clear.
As far as I have understood, the system just needs data from one rtk station within approximately 10 km to retain 1 cm precision. So if there already is one that close to your home with publicly available data, you might not need any rtk station at all
Great! Thank you very much for the link!
