Battery Temperature Problems

My Yarbo sat in my “metal lined garage” overnight last night. Not much signal from any source in there and its battery had dropped to 70%.

I don’t know if that’s good or bad. It just is…

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I collected more data overnight that I want to share.

Yesterday my Yarbo went back to its dock at 2:45 pm and did not leave it due to rain. Outside temp was 28.
It charged at 700W to full until 5 pm. At that point the charger dropped to a steady 11W until 10 pm when it started trickle charging again at 44W for 4 hours straight! My timer kicked in and shut down the dock at 2 am.
This morning the battery is at 98% and 27 degrees, while the outside temperature has been a cool 22 C since midnight.
At no time did I use the app nor restart the Rover or the dock.

From this we can see that the battery takes a very long time to cool (or the temp is not calibrated correctly and is off by 5 degrees).
We can also see that Yarbo is inconsistent with electricity usage while fully charged on the dock. It can consume as much as 44W for hours while doing nothing apparently but also pull as little as 11W for at least 5 hours and have little to no battery charge drop.
To me this seems to point to some unknown internal activity going on while fully charged on the dock. It would be interesting to capture the network traffic and see if there is data being sent to the mother ship during those times of high activity. With its cameras Yarbo is a potential spying tool, who knows.

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I got the exact dog shade. I had only set up one zone and I lit it because I quickly realized I had to put the doghouse facing north and south. Hence the western sun setting would cast a shade over the mower.

Assuming your data is accurate, I’d be interested in knowing what’s going on during 44W period.

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I just got mine this week. In Delaware having the same exact problems. Misalignment, overheating in 84 F weather. My charging dock is in the shade. Overheats on that as well.

I added some white tape to the top of the battery cover. To my surprise this helped. Didn’t solve completely, but extended charge times significantly. I’m in OH and experiencing many days in excess of 90.

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I also received my white tape (Thanks Amazon) and applied it. Does seem to extend things a bit. Also in Ohio. Super rainy last couple days but still HOT!

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I’m just gpnna Plasti Dip spray the cover. What’s another $15 at this point.

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Best performance will be to just remove the cover, and plasti-dip the top of the battery.

That would be the best, but I don’t want the battery compartment filling with water in a rainstorm

Removing the cover only while charging has made a significant difference for me.

Yep. Cover removed and fan blowing on it under a dog house worked for me. Neither of those were included in the package :slight_smile:

I am really curious to know what hardware changes are being planned to retrofit the current fleet.

Maybe just a vented cover with insulation underneath will be sufficient, although I think a fan integrated into the battery compartment is probably the best solution. Not good for the battery’s long term health to be at close to threshold temperatures for extended periods of time.

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Ford Super Duty gets cup holder importance.

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I’m catching up on posts here and see that some folks have taken to directly modifying the battery box cover - cutting a hole, installing a fan, etc. I’m thinking down a similar path but hesitant to modify the existing cover. Doesn’t look like there are replacements available with the rest of the spare parts ( that I’ve been able to look for ).

Before I bust out the calipers and protractor to make one - does someone have a good STL file to print another cover?

This has been asked numerous times and nobody has responded in the affirmative. Did you check OnShapes library to see if one exists? I can’t check at the moment.

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I keep looking but there doesn’t seem to be one. With all the odd models there (insulation mount, spindle cover) you would think a battery cover would be easy, but I don’t have the equipment to design one, so I keep waiting.

In my mind the best design would be something like this that blows out the back rather than up, and then just a weather protective top for rain.

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JNS: My apologies. My search turned up nothing as well - thus the hail mary pass for asking in an open forum. I don’t (yet) have onshape access, but can look into it.

KingLerch: Agreed - blowing out and down ( think dryer vent ) would seem to be the way to go. Ideally you’d have two fans, one as an input and one as a exhaust, with the thought being to positive air movement around the battery.

My goal here is something that clips into the same spots as the original cover, provides something approaching the same level of water protection, and has zero dependency on the core unit to operate: esp32 controlled, solar power, rechargable batteries, ip53 rated fans, temperature sensors, and ideally some sort of data traffic to tell the world how it’s doing.

Shoot: Just buy one of these and call it a day: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256808631062540.html?gatewayAdapt=glo2usa4itemAdapt

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If the leaf blower was back mountable, you could pipe the output from that sucker into the battery compartment. It may turn into a hovercraft at that point though.

Just spit balling it here…

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Feel free to upvote this request then! That’s step 1. Step 2 activate when temp exceeds 45.

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