I ran my yarbo for lawn cutting, but bought the snowblower and plow to possibly use during the winter. Instead of moving the basestation, I just relocated the unit inside of a garage. My question is can I run the yarbo without a basestation. I know it would not be completely automated, which I am ok with as I think having the Yarbo out in Buffalo, NY snow is probably going to shorten its life span. I would like to map my yard and just use it manually on occasion. Aka open garage and send command to remove snow according to a new map. Then I can return it to warm garage and plug it in to keep battery levels charged. My basestation is in a fenced in yard not where snow removal would be. I did not relocate it. Could I purchase a second base station if I can’t just run it semi-automated?
I’m also in WNY. I do exactly what you outlined. I keep it in the garage and manually send it out. The charging pad is outside next to the house for summer use. Last winter I left it outside but ultimately decided against it this year for a number of reasons.
You can get a second pad but good luck getting GPS inside the garage. I just manually plug it into the corded charger.
Since I basically have to babysit it while its snowblowing it’s not that big of a deal.
It runs mostly fine by itself for mowing the lawn.
BTW, that wasnt an interception.
I do the same most of the time. The other thing that you could do is to make a virtual docking station near where you’d like Yarbo to park when completed. This way it’s not trying to go back to the actual docking station. You can disable the actual one and enable it again in the spring. Or get two, but GPS in the garage is definitely an issue.
I tried setting up a virtual dock in the garage but that didn’t work out very well because of the GPS issues. They really need to include or sell higher gain antannas.
Yeah I meant outside so it parks outside the garage door waiting to be let in afterwards. M series can supposedly park indoors, hopefully we see that extend to the Y series too.
There will be the caveat of the studs on the winter tracks.
If you use them, they’ll score your garage floor, so you’ll want to mitigate that.
Grab some inexpensive flooring tiles (or something) for the path you’ll be driving it on, inside. Linoleum, or even some OSB scraps.
Hi there,
As discussed by our community members, you can set up a virtual docking station for Yarbo. Please note, however, that this setup means Yarbo will not operate in a fully automated mode, as it may need to recharge during a work plan, which would require manual assistance.
We hope this helps clarify the option for your use case.
For your Typical 10 to 20 degree day with 6 inches of snow, what is the average run time before R2D2 needs to recharge? I didn’t put the studded tracks on yet. Figure I would try snow removal with just the summer tracks. I have basically two parking lots. One is about 35’ wide by 60’ long. Pretty much a rectangle. I am hoping R2D2 can remove snow while I take care of the other drive way with plow or snow blower. Mostly bought the yarbo for lawn cutting as I have a hill in back yard and can’t really run the riding mower on it (although my son does but young adults believe they can’t die). So if the yarbo saves me 20 minutes a week cutting the lawn it is a win. If It can do snow removal on just part of my yard, that would be another win. I bought the snow blower and the plow, but just sitting in the garage currently with plug in it.
Battery life depends on multiple factors so its hard to say. The biggest factor in my opinion is the type of snow, light and fluffy or damp and compacted. My driveway is about 14x36 with two sidewalks. For light snow it usually consumes about 30% and for compacted snow it can consume 50%, maybe more.
I’ve come to the conclusion that Yarbo performs better in larger areas like parking lots. Not based on battery life but on overall performance. In smaller areas anything it misses or can’t get to seems exaggerated.
Thanks for the detailed explanation. We don’t have an exact runtime number, as it can vary based on conditions. In general, the Yarbo snow blower typically runs for about 30 minutes in deep or heavy snow and up to 90 minutes in light snow before needing to recharge.