mowZILLA

Summary:

this is a software and hardware project to "smart UP" a robomower without using hardwired connections to the robomowers board, sensors or actuators. Just read information from LEDs and Sound / Bussers to log the condition of the robomower and notify the owner about status changes and actions to be carried out.

what it is not:

a way to control or change parameters of the robomower

Robomower hardware

Yardforce 600 ECO this robomower has no bluetooth, wifi or any other connection to tell it's current state, e.g.:

• Mowing
• Charging
• Lifted/tilted
• ERROR
• Low battery

In fact, all of this above mentioned states are indicated via LEDs at the cockpit and some of them are followed by a dedicated sound/beep pattern.

here the link to the user manual: https://www.yardforce-tools.com/ProductFiles/fa4b8085-5971-479d-b8ae-45d6835b5a5c.pdf

Cockpit

overview of the buttons and indicator LEDs

The cockpit is devided into 5 zones / funtional areas

• Zone 1: LED indicators for the machine status
• Zone 2: Working time setting area
• Zone 3: Signal setting
• Zone 4: Locking button
• Zone 5: Home & Start button.

Focus area is zone 1 with it's indicator LEDs

this LEDs indicate the following status

• Tilt - Your mower has been lifted during use for some reason

• Signal - The mower cannot receive the signal sent from the boundary wire

• Battery - Battery voltage is too low to perform normal mowing

• Charge - In the process of charging

Environment:

wifi is available for about 50% in the area of our lawn/yard mowZILLA hardware has to be low power and powerd by battery, since it wont be connected to the robomower's battery or charging station

Idea:

Sensing:

use photo electric resistors (sensors) to interpret the LED output lights of the robomowers cockpit use microphone (sensor) to interpret the indications of the sound/beep patterns.

Logging:

log all the events on a device

Connections:

connect to local wifi if available during the different cylces of the robomower

Condition Monitoring Information:

some basic calculations based on status changes, durations, tima of day, or other environmental data / information. These information should then be posted in notifications to the end user to take emidiate actions if necessarry or for the purpose of analysis and further optimization.

Notifications:

send messages to a recepient

• via email
• via whatsapp
• other existing message services that can be looked up on any mobile device (android / apple)

Notifications should include:

• Date & Time
• Category
• Normal, Warning, ERROR
• Change of status; from OLD to NEW
• Actionable information
• suggestions of actions to be carried out, e.g.: