Remotely Controlled Lawn Tractor
offthegrid.dev
offthegrid.dev
Damn near anything can kill you. Context matters. In most cases a consumer lawnmower should probably have a deadman switch. Plenty of people have been hurt or killed over the years by poorly thought out fail "safes". It's easy to make low effort online comments about safety but when someone comes along and re-uses your widget in a use case you don't expect your assumptions may not hold. You rarely have the context to determine what's safe unless you know the end situation in which the equipment will actually operate. For a lawnmower you do. When you start generalizing your control system and applying it to other stuff you don't.
Absolutist rules of thumb are worth what you pay for them.
Examples include stuff with blades, hammers, or swinging arms moving at high speed or with great force.
I used to work in a Chemistry lab, one in which one of my lab-mates once had a explosion while he heated something which wasn't what he thought it was.
I was the guy who phoned for the ambulance (and got the fire service included for free, but maybe that makes sense if you work in a lab). I went to the front entrance to meet the firefighters as instructed, after identifying myself they asked me "do you have anything dangerous in your lab?"
I was probably still high on the adrenaline (there had been a fairly loud bang and the glass side windows of my colleague's fume hood were blown out) but I recall being unable to answer that question. I think I eventually said "Yes, of course we have dangerous stuff, you have anything particular in mind?"
Context really does matter!
You might enjoy the NEC section on fire pump systems. It's a complete flip from the rest of NEC, requiring design around "Keep the fire pumps running at all costs, even if you're in the process of melting down the windings." Separate wiring conduits, handling full locked rotor current indefinitely, etc.
The logic, reasonably enough, is that if the fire pumps are running, you probably have way, way bigger problems that will be made worse if your fire pump system trips off to protect the wiring.
It's under the seat. With nobody in the seat, that had to be modified for this mower.
Me, I just don't have grass anymore. Fuck grass. It's a bunch of bougie bullshit from a line of the French Aristocracy who ultimately wound up with their heads in baskets. Maybe we shouldn't be copying them.
I've never used a mower fitting that description. On all of mine the safety handle runs the entire length of the push handle and you have to essentially let go of the mower to disengage it.
The workaround, which I didn't implement yet, is to build a smooth and clean garden. Of course branches fall, ants build, all sort of animals dig, bushes grow id you give them a couple of weeks at the wrong time of the year, etc.
That lawnmower is also much bigger than mine.
Can also confirm about the zero turn mowers. Recently switched jobs from automating cars/tanks to mowers myself. At the very minimum mowers have way tighter power and space constraints plus hydros are not easy to control well automatically.
That's the approach most industrial robots take - instead of trying to deal with humans and not hurt them, just make sure there are no humans within reach of the robots.
That's harder than it should be. No amount of asking my neighbors has kept their kids out of my fenced lawn to retrieve their soccer balls. Which is actually an issue because one of my dogs is not particularly friendly. I'd gladly kick the ball back over if they just knocked on the door. We're not a neighbor-hate-neighbor situation, we actually get along quite well, but kids will be kids.
It's up to you to run the numbers whether the cost of securing the area is less than what you spend (in terms of time/inconvenience/etc) manually mowing the lawn.
I thought it was a goat at first.
Mow some patches for the humans (because standing in a buggy tall field is just no bueno), but leave the rest for nature. Rent or borrow some goats or sheep if you really want it kept lower; at least you'll end up with richer soil that way.
I maintain a lot of habitat in the back, but the front has to stay high and tight. My neighbors prefer it as well, you can change a culture but should think carefully before defying it.
So as far as biodiversity goes: there's enough of the typical 'no mowing' vegetation already whereas ecosystems like flower-rich meadows are in decline. Currently and practically for laymen this can only be countered by mowing and removing cuttings. Depending on soil type and what's in it fertlizer-wise about twice a year. Preferrably, as you mention, still with mowing patches instead of everything at once in order to maintain some habitat for the fauna. Still a lot less time and money consuming than maintaining a lawn.
[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=nitrogen+deposition+map+eur...
In commercial farmlands, even in "progressive" countries like the Netherlands, the insect friendly unmowed zones are present but very minimal compared to the commercial farmlands.
By my estimation, the unmowed insect strips are 1/50th or less than the crop areas.
It is good to see that roadside zones are being allowed to grow a bit taller. As drivers, it's actually a negative because it makes seeing around curves more difficult, but it absolutely results in more wild flowers and insects. It's quite beautiful too.
It's also quite debatable whether they're that friendly. Leaving it grow then mowing everything in one go and leaving all cuttings, as I see often in my neighborhoud, is more like creating a death trap for insects. Also because these zones are almost always subsidized, but not mandatory, so if the farmer feels like it they can just be removed again. One thing these zones are often good for though is catching mud streams from erosion. Ideally there would be no such erosion of course, but at leasts it provides some prevention of soil just washing away.
On a brighter side: if I got it correctly Europe is working on legislation which is going to make it mandatory for farmers to dedicate x% of land to nature. Not just zones with grass, also line elements with bushes etc. Essentially restoring what the land looked like here the past centuries before agricultural industrialization kicked in.
As drivers, it's actually a negative because it makes seeing around curves more difficult,
Pretty sure communities or whoever owns the road are allowed to mow curves and other spots throughout the year to guarantee visibility. But yes, there's quite some potential there (there, and in gardens): the total amount of area makes it well worth it. Still going to take a while before it gets done properly though (again: mowing everything in one go is quite detrimental).
Considering how badly the Dutch farmers have behaved thus far on any issue which “threatens” their way of life (profit maximization), I can only imagine how they will respond to this.
Maybe they will finally cross a line so bold that the Dutch government will stop bending over for them.
If unmanaged nature does run wild with one or a few species, at some point they overstay their welcome and get rebalanced.
Of course the final equalizer is fire. And that's something that we as humans really dislike, because it burns our work (and homes and sometimes even us) down. So we prevent it. But completely left to itself, nature does tend to stabilize after some period.
As for western Europe, I live in Netherlands. The nitrogen problem is entirely manmade (animal farming waste). Were we to stop ranching at such high densities and producing unnatural levels of animal waste, the nitrogen levels would not be nearly so high.
I have also lived in plant farmland areas in the south of Holland, and we have plagues of burning weed that grows. But it turns out, that plant grows in places with excess nitrogen. It feeds on it and eventually draws it out of the soil. After a few years, that "weed" stops growing and the soil nitrogen levels are more normal.
At this moment I am in central Portugal trying to grow some trees. The thorny vines (blackberry brambles I believe, but I just don't keep up with the names) are a huge problem. However, they provide benefits in dry soil because they grow very well, provide shade, provide food for foraging animals, and help prevent soil erosion when the rains finally come.
Nature doesn't seem to be concerned with human comfort. I f*cking hate the vines, but I do see their purpose.
After some years of study of permaculture and actual experiments, plus a decent amount of reading, I think our best hope as humans is to develop high efficiency vertical farms and to keep our actual earth footprint low... and to start devoping subterranian habitation.
On the last point, it's really a wonder to have a home which stays around 68F all year. Heat it up just a little and it is cosy. It is fire-proof, ultra efficient, and it can still be light with skylights and a south/west facing opening.
Honestly, for a fraction of the mental energy we spend on designing scalable software systems, we could make livable earth-friendly human food ad habitation systems. This is not rocket science; after all, primative civilizations already figured out some of these things.
The problem being that in the example I made, this balance is still man-made and not really natural. I.e. if you'd done the same 500 years ago, you'd get a balance with more than a few species. If you'd done the same like 5000 years ago (give or take), things would be even more different because there were still large flocks of wild grazers around.
After a few years, that "weed" stops growing and the soil nitrogen levels are more normal.
Except the deposition keeps on going, so depends on what 'normal' is the reference compared against.
Because providing convenient habitat for grass dwelling rodents adjacent to your home will result in some fraction of them trying to move in.
I think there are probably better ways to address this problem than mowing grass right up against your house though. Ringing your house with mulched gardens or even gravel patches (particularly french drains, in areas prone to flooding) is a good alternative, presuming you don't have a HOA forbidding it..
I'm not suggesting you wade through waist high weeds as you walk out your front door. But if you looked at the photo of the original post, you would see the plot being mowed appeared to be just a pasture well beyond habitation.
> All in all, this type of claim should be backed by research :) Curious if there is any.
Yes, any evidence for your claims would be appreciated. Are there places where mice/rats aren't considered a disease vector?
All species? I actually don't know. But with 'depending on where you live' I also menat situations like mice entering your unused basement etc.
Anyway: I'm mainly questioning whether 'long vegetation around my house means more chance of rodents in my house' is something general. Also because it's not my experience. Then again I don't live in, say, Australia.
This is a bad situation, if anybody ever goes in that basement for any reason ever, they're at risk of catching numerous diseases from the rodent feces they stir up into the air by walking around. Hantavirus is spread this way, and Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome kills about a third of the people who catch it. There is no reason to accept this risk if you have any other choice.
I could see practical uses well beyond a lawn mower. This would be very handy in really hot or cold weather with just about any large tractor that is not enclosed and does not have air conditioning or heating. No more breathing exhaust and no more being exposed to the weather. For large farm equipment one would still need a person near by in the event things get tangled up in the equipment such as barbed wire snagged up into discs but that is an acceptable trade-off to me.
As a bonus, no more being locked into newer tractors. If I could put this remote control on my 1947 Fordson tractor it would now be put to work with automation and for fun the neighbors would think it's a ghost tractor. Probably the tricky part is dealing with the stiff clutch and finicky gear shifting. I imagine it would get some looks from the tourists passing by on the highway.
I think we are nearing the point where a camera can monitor my body movements and mimic it fairly accurately in a robot. Combine that with gloves for hand tracking, VR goggles, audio headsets and maybe haptic feedback and we can effectively have remote experiences.
Once that’s the case, you put a robot in a tractor seat; add a bunch of cameras (for VR), microphones (for audio), and a couple robot arms with humanoid hands attached (https://www.psyonic.io/ability-hand).
I can then remotely control the tractor in VR space, but have it operate 100 miles away
But, yeah, overall, most vehicle control systems are far less evil than people seem to think. I think part of the issue is that the "vehicle hacking" community have managed to massively over-hype basic protocol / message reverse engineering.
For everything else you will most likely need to go custom but it's absolutely possible.
Effectively, I’d have a massive market.
But if I were going to create an autonomous/RC anything, I would start with Ardupilot [0], which has off-the-shelf support for a lot of what's implemented here, like mapping, waypoint management, and even state estimation/control. You can buy a computer that can do all of this for pretty cheap.
[0] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor/
That said, these things doing the rounds around a neighbourhood would be cool. But then, so would street sweepers and weeders.
I dream of far more sophisticated home garden robots, but would settle for farming out the basic haircut to a robot.
And of course there is a very close task to mowing - de-mining, and there are already huge swaths of land there freed back from Russia which need demining, and there would be a lot more in the near future.
An early model years ago was able to tip over and keep running before it was recalled ... not the kind of thing you want sitting out on your lawn or the sidewalk.
Been running this mower for 5 summers now and little to no issues. Blades need to be changed every 2-3 months depending on conditions. Overall it has saved me probably hundreds of hours on manual mowing.
If your yard has any relatively steep parts, they fail. I was 100% ready to buy one, only to discover I would still be mowing 30-40% of my yard by hand. I suspect there's a reason most of the demos are on completely flat yards.
I'm not aware of really anything capable intended for homeowners besides a good ol' push mower.
Being tracked only really solves the traction part of the equation so they aren't necessarily any better at navigating slopes safely than a wheeled mower.
I thought the same thing about tracks: only solves the issue of traction/ground pressure, but for whatever reason they're supposed to be better on slopes.
My (wheeled) mower sometimes slips or gets stuck on a particular area on my property because I often don't have enough traction to mow up & down the slope if the ground is not extremely dry: grass is enough to cause slip. And sidehilling causes the upper wheels to lose traction. Perhaps the increased "bite" of the treads compensates for this? Dunno.
Now if only it could hitch and unhitch implements, load and unload a wagon, back up and see behind. Then it could be useful!