Greetings,
Just set up my Yarbo for snowblowing. I am receiving promising results though there is quite a bit of troubleshooting - my use case is a 250’ arcing driveway with significant slope, significant tree cover. If I can make it work, I’ll be ahead within one winter compared with the costs from the prior professional plow service.
I’ve been reading over the forum, and thanks to the many helpful contributors I’ve worked through many of the troubleshooting issues. The community is the reason I decided to move forward with the purchase.
I have some other specific use cases that I’d like Yarbo to solve, however in one way or another, proposals have been raised and shelved to prioritize features that have higher ROI for Yarbo to succeed as a business, but fail to meet use cases such as mine.
This post introduces a virtual ‘pressure relief valve’ for diy users and would further unlock the possibilities Yarbo presents with a simple solution (that can be expanded in the future via softtware, SDK, etc). I searched the forums but didn’t quite see a similar approach. If I missed it, apologies.
Introducing: The Yarbo ‘Universal Power Harness’
The harness would connect to the port on the back of the unit, and grant users access to a power supply from the core that could be used for…anything.
Honestly, I just don’t want to haul my garbage cans in anymore and while Yarbo is prioritizing and business planning, my cans need to go to the curb every Thursday night. This has been discussed before, but interest appeared low.
This option would provide a diy platform for Yarbo to get visibility into other diy communities, and give the Yarbo community a diy option to align around. I’m confident y’all can figure out the warranty and other implications - after all you already built a robot that clears snow from my driveway.
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I have had this discussion a lot with the other PPP members and I’ve heard lots of users express this interest as well. Basically some type of box or harness that could supply a setable voltage with some relays (NO and NC) that could allow users to do all sorts of attachments for towing. Then the software would just need to be able to toggle the relays at set points or something to that effect. Even just supply a steady voltage for whatever. I think this would be a nice complement to tow mode (whenever that is ready and fully realized). But even manually, it would be helpful.
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I actually JUST had a discussion with Ken about the possibility of tapping into the power ports for DYI applications.
The short answer is - Due to the architecture of the current Yarbo platform, it would be fairly difficult to open up the ports for DYI use even though Ken would personally love to have that ability.
I don’t see how a dedicated “module” or “accessory” couldn’t support this. Even if it didn’t supply power, just triggered a relay or something. I think the complication is with the path planning and software itself, but that could be simplistic in my view. Drop waypoints. Turn on relay here, turn off relay here. You could use the same logic that memory path does for the trimmer. Copy everything I am doing, I am driving in a loop and I hit relay on here, relay off here. Maybe it’s more complicated than that?
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It could be made that easy, and will be very important to implement with tow mode so we can hook up relays/actuators for raising/lowering, enabling/disabling spreaders, etc etc. but there are bigger issues for now😅
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Maybe even an relay module with 4 dry contacts, and/or isolated inputs for feedback even. Could implement things with node-red or an open portion of the robotics platform that runs the core behind the scenes
To be honest, our conversation was centered more around tapping into the power to run attachments and other DIY items. Like creating a button on the UI to turn power to the left accessory port on/off. We didn’t discuss the possibility of Yarbo doing signaling for externally connected devices.
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Ah, yes, I don’t believe that is possible in the current designs. That makes sense. Would really be nice to be able to tap a swap module button and have it kill data and power to the modules/accessories though so you could kinda “hot swap” a module but do it safely.
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Welcome to the Yarbo family! We’re really glad to hear that the community played a role in your decision to purchase Yarbo, and we truly appreciate you taking the time to share such a thoughtful and well-explained idea.
Thank you for introducing the concept of a “Universal Power Harness.” We know that many of our users have strong DIY skills, and this kind of solution could open up interesting possibilities for people who want to customize Yarbo to fit their own unique use cases. It’s great to see ideas that explore how Yarbo could be extended beyond its current capabilities.
Thanks as well to @bryan.wheeler and @rgloverii for contributing to the discussion. While this is not something we’re able to offer in the short term, we absolutely recognize that exploring additional possibilities and flexibility is an area many users are interested in. Suggestions like this are valuable and help guide longer-term thinking.
Thanks again for sharing your perspective, and welcome once more to the Yarbo community. We look forward to more discussions and ideas from you here on the forum!
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Exactly, give me a steady supply of 12V DC and a way to enable/disable - then let me decide what to do with it.
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It would be great to have a Yarbo SDK/open API facing outward to signal externally connected devices - and that is exciting, I am hoping that by starting with a simple continuous power source access (e.g. 12V) and the ability to enable/disable, Yarbo can see the excitement and diy community take off to reach that vision. Yarbo becomes an enabler and focuses on its ‘core’ tech, while empowering the community.
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Understood - and while Yarbo is ‘longer term thinking’, my trash cans must go out every Thursday!
I want Yarbo to come up with the best long term solution for sure. - In Addition - give us a short-term path to use Yarbo in other ways in our daily lives. It will only deepen the interconnectedness and reliance on your platform, and Yarbo can use those trends to determine how the product should evolve.
Yarbo is much more attractive compared to other approaches being developed - but if it comes down to the best ‘long term solution’ vs ‘getting the job done’…again, the trash cans must go out every Thursday!
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I suggest waiting until Tow Mode is released.
I already designed a trash can trolly for my Yarbo to pull. But without Tow Mode, there’s too great of a potential that Yarbo will try to back up and end up jackknifing it.
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