I’m in love (with my robotic lawnmower)
I’m in love! I’m in love! And I don’t care who knows it!!
Her name is Zelda. She’s been with us for about 72 hours and I can’t imagine life without her. And I’m not even the one who used to mow the yard, so, I feel like that’s saying a lot.
After deciding we were paying way too much for way too little lawncare from a local service AND realizing we have made the backyard less than ideal for quick/easy mowing (stay tuned for a post on that) — I could not resist the internet rabbithole that is: robotic lawnmowers. And, let me tell you…it’s like going to the animal shelter “just to look”. Nope, you’re coming home with one of them babies. And life hasn’t been the same since. Who saved who? <3
Interestingly, I had a brief stint as a designer at Husqvarna during the early-ish days of robotic lawnmower development.
Watching the prototypes merrily cut the grass around the office each morning filled me with such joy. They just looked so…happy…purposeful…striving for greatness. That was about 7 years ago and though I would not quite call them “commonplace” yet, robo-mowers are definitely becoming much more attainable to the average consumer.
So, how did I select my robotic lawnmower?
I ultimately purchased the Mammotion YUKA Mini 600H (say that 5 times, fast). That decision was based on about week of scouring Amazon reviews, Reddit threads AND a conversation with AI (Gemini) to make my purchase decision.
Here’s what I was looking for and what I learned:
1) A brand thats been around for more than 10 years. This is a pretty good rule of thumb with any real expensive tech purchase, IMO. A brand new company might make a brand new product that’s absolutely great…BUTTTTT what if they cease to exist in 3 years and there’s virtually zero support for your big fancy purchase?! Fudge. This criteria narrowed down choices quite a bit - Husqvarna, Segway, Sunseeker and Mammotion made that list.
2) Positioning technology “RTK” positioning is where it’s at. It’s what you want. Either RTK or 4G (meaning your lawnmower basically gets a cell-phone module and plan and locates itself just like you iPhone would…triangulating off of cell phone towers). I absolutely did not want to deal with burying a permimeter wire. And anything that only works with optical sensing just seemed….dumb, TBH and had tons of frustrated reviwers. All of the Mammotion mowers I looked at use RTK, with the ability to add a 4G module (at the time of writing this those modules are about $150 with 1 year of free service, then about $70/yr after that).
3) Yard size This is the biggest thing you’ll need to figure out which dictates which models will/wont work for your needs. Most brands have a model for 1/4 acre, 1/2 acre and 1 acre…roughly speaking. And the ANNOYING thing I learned is: most of these models are actually EXACTLY THE SAME HARDWARE with artificial limitations added into the SOFTWARE that limits how much area it will let you moe. Arrgggggg. And before you’re all like “I’ll just beat the system by making multiple 1/4 acre maps out of my 1 acre lawn and do it in pieces” - NOPE, not how it works. The 1/4, 1/2 or 1 acre spec refers to the TOTAL area of all of your maps combined. Sneaky little buggers.
4) Cutting height range that’s right for your grass: I have to thank Gemini (Google’s AI) for helping me realize this was even a thing. As said, I was NOT the one who took care of our lawn in the first place so I honestly knew very little about proper lawncare. The YUKA minis come in a ‘standard’ or an ‘H’ version . . . and turns out the ‘H’ refers to a taller heigh range (2” and up versus under 2” for the standard version)
5) Price. Oh yeah, that. These things are not cheap. And I’m pretty sure you get what you pay for. Husqvarnas are the creme-de-la-creme, but, out of my budget. I was searching for sub $1K. And I achieved! Thanks to Mammotion’s fathers day sale and some cash back from my credit card — I squeaked in riiiiiiiiight at $1K but that included a ‘free’ 4G module! Whoop whoop!
Zelda deploys her trusty headlight as she warriors onward into the night
Very silly AND very serious reasons why I love it:
1) When it gets dark, she turns on her little headlight and keeps chugging on through thr darkess like a warrior. Not to mention her super cool charging lights.
2) She leaves gloriusly perfect, algorithmically generated lines across the grass that calm my mind
3) You can watch a live camera feed (in the app) of her view scooting through the yard. Breezing through swarms of bugs.
4) She makes a really cool SWOOSH sword noise upon 1st time set up (I cannot get her to do it again!). And I don’t mean the actual sound of the blades, I mean an audio file thats just…cool.
5) There’s an app feature that lets you draw shapes like stars, hearts and I THINK draw-your-own. I feel like you’d have to have some seriously long grass to be able to see a design like that clearly. But, good to have handy if/when I want to start communicating with the aliens through crop circles…
Things I now know…
Setup can be a little frustrating but not terrible. I’d definitely recommend trying the mapping process a few times by making fake SMALL maps, trying them, and deleting them to get the hang of things.
Little quirks in the app like: When you move the base station or RTK you have to delete your maps and make new ones. I knew that. I did that. And after I was done remapping my entire front yard it popped up and said “OH! Your RTK moved so press this RESET button and THEN remap, ok”. Hmph. I had looked through settings and there was no where to hit that reset button before I remapped….so…. if/when you do this maybe make a tiny fake map first so you get the reset button and THEN do you full remapping effort.
Gravel is a nope. I assumed this, but nonetheless I tried putting the charging station in a gravel area just to see what it would do. It was kind of endearing to watch attempt to scoot its butt backward into the charger, only to get stuck spinning then try again from another angle. Alas, she cannot handle gravel. I found a better area for the base station with less treacherous terrain.
You can do a combination of automapping and manual mapping to get the exact map you want. Automapping works very well when there’s clear borders and edges. Manual mapping is super fun but tedious. As soon as it gets to a less defined spot, or you want it to stop following the edge (like, for example, where our yard ends and the neighbor’s property technically starts I needed it to take a hard right turn) - you simply press the little remote control icon and manually steer it where you want it to go.
It needs to recharge about halfway through each area. This is no big deal as far as I’m concerned…its no sweat of my back…but be aware - when it’s ready to resume it’s task IT JUST GOES! I found this out the hard way because Zelda needs the backyard gate opened to get across driveway and into the front yard. I assumed it would politely ASK me once ready to resume (via push notification) but instead she just went for it, unbeknownst to me, and sat there staring at the closed gate draining battery until I realized. Not a huge deal but odd that the app didn’t tell me.
On it’s first run ever - I was frustrated at first to see had gotten no where near the edge of the yard, maybe a full foot off. BUT I later learned it’s default setting was “zig zag first, perimeter last”. Meaning, it went up/down/up/down the lawn first and then did 3 rings of the perimeter. All good, but, for future cuts I changed the settings to do the perimeter first because it just makes my mind happier :)
Lastly, I now know I love her so much that I WILL be buying her a small dog house and possibly even a dog door to get through the fence on her own. It’s the little things.
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*Affiliate linksNote: For some reason, at the time of writing this, Amazon no longer sells the 600 series…only the 500 and 700. The only difference between them is the square meters they can mow: 500, 600 and 700 square meters, respectively. All my notes and recommendations in the post above still apply. The 600 series cn be found directly on the Mammotion website. Enjoy!
