I bought Yarbo after purchasing a property with about 2-3 acres of usable land recently in hopes that I could set it and forget it. But I have a front yard with maybe 20-30 large trees in the front, and never did fall clean up so my yard has been filled with sticks and leaves. I bought a large dump cart for Yarbo to tow on follow me mode so I could pick up all the sticks and avoid damaging the blades on Yarbo (this has been a multiple day grueling process plus Yarbo freaked out when it saw a tree and Jack knifed so I’ve been out of commission with towing). I also bought a lawn sweeper in hopes of picking up all the leaves but Yarbo moves so slow and the leaves are packed so much that this has been futile as well.
Not to mention I think mulching the leaves may help compact them so I can dump them in the back yard, and a standard mower would easily feed directly into a bag. So am I thinking about this right? Do I just need to get a big zero turn mower and give up with the thought that Yarbo can support me in mowing a perfectly cleaned up yard? I really wanted Yarbo to work but it’s not looking great
Sounds like the Pro Mower is what you need. It can handle sticks, leaves, etc. The standard mower doesn’t do well with those.
As for the towing, I would consider the Back brace mount (BBM). It includes an upgraded tow hitch. Hopefully they release tow mode in the next month or two which would potentially help with these types of tasks and hopefully limit or prevent jack knifing.
The core does move too slow for most sweepers, unfortunately. You would need a powered sweeper, but I do think the pro could eventually chop up the leaves enough to work like a zero turn would after a couple of passes.
Sorry to hear of your initial Yarbo related challenges. Like Bryan said, Yarbo doesn’t really move fast enough to use a tow behind sweeper lots of us have tried with no significant success. Much easier to use a lawn tractor or zero turn for that type of activity.
Once you get things all cleaned up, Yarbo should be able to take care of your property. I think for any lawn robot, the key is initial yard prep and proper planning. Feel free to ask any questions here in the forum, and we’ll guide you through it.
Thanks Bryan. I do have the pro, I just didn’t want to push my luck and subject it to the massive branches because the blades seem fairly small. Anyways I haven’t checked back in here because my Yarbo has been out of commission. Is this company just a complete scam or am I just unlucky? I’m completely baffled by the fact that their customer service could be so incompetent. Between this and the fact that my tow hitch snapped after the Yarbo thought a tree was me during follow me mode and jacknifed, my Yarbo has been useless to me for almost a month and I am a heartbeat away from charging back the entire Yarbo on my credit card. The India customer service folks are nice guys but they are useless as I’ve been calling them almost every other day, and they give advice like “try sticking any sharp thing in to remove your broken tow hitch.” Honestly I’m at a loss for words at this point and feel awful as I just got off the phone screaming at the India customer service again because I don’t know what else to do anymore.
It’s not a scam, they are just back logged right now. I`m sure @Yarbo-Forum will look into this and escalate accordingly for you. I hope this gets resolved soonest for you. Definitely sounds frustrating.
Hi there, I’m really sorry for the inconvenience and frustration this situation has caused you.
I’ve checked your support tickets in our system. Regarding ticket #190814 and ticket #191147, I’ve already contacted the field service engineers responsible for both cases and asked them to prioritize your issues.
Please rest assured that we are actively following up on both problems and will continue working with the team to get them resolved for you as soon as possible. We truly appreciate your patience and understanding.
You guys are completely ridiculous. Your customer support team are unqualified to troubleshoot a single issue. Nobody in your company seems to be educated on how your system works - I was sent a refurbished core and my previous map wasn’t showing up after installation. Your instructions explicitly state that maps autosave so customer support had me reinstall the data center to no avail at which point it had to go to the “senior engineers” I.e. a >24 hour turnaround in China. Can you not hire any Americans?? Needless to say I reconnected my old Yarbo, found the option to save my map, and then switched back and then my map was viewable but still failed to download due to “AWS error”. I’ve been struggling to add a new map and just abandon my previously mapped one because I’ve lost more weeks than I can afford, and that doesn’t work either! You guys are going to get blown away by a competitor very soon
Re the original question “Is my yard more than Yarbo can handle?”, if you mean “exclusively” as your only ‘tractor’, ‘large’ mower, or implement for 3 acres with 30 large trees —
You could hire-out the fall-cleanup and tree work on a yearly basis. With that assumption, then just-a-Yarbo sounds fine.
Otherwise - the simple straight answer to the original question is “yes”. It doesn’t mean a Yarbo still can’t be an important part of your fleet.
Hi there, I’m really sorry for the delayed response. I’ve already asked our team to check your case as soon as possible. Thank you so much for your patience.
Thanks Pete, I do agree that barring the technical issues I’ve faced with getting even a single pass at mowing my lawn, Yarbo could at least handle the easy stuff. It’s just a shame because with some good leadership, they could be there.
Local tech support who have deep experience and understanding of the different scenarios users may encounter - the India team try their best and have nice ticket-tracking, but their actual real world expertise is lacking
Investment into peripheral activities such as towing and therefore providing an increased speed to make it bearable/useful. Map drift with the new core means I need to re-map which with a faster core speed, wouldn’t be so awful. And frankly, a faster Yarbo would make it much more pleasant in follow me mode when I’m moving massive branches and whatnot to the back of my yard
Strong product management who can actually look at what the users are facing, translate that into engineering priorities, and also interface with customer-facing teams to ensure their documentation is accurate (it’s not right now)
Let’s leave aside the fact that AI could probably make both their software development much more streamlined, but also should be incorporated into mapping and navigating lawns. Roomba has been able to map and clean my house for years, what’s with Yarbo being so deterministic still?
Anyways, as an update I’ve been trying to get my refurbished core functioning, after receiving a unit which I couldn’t open the back cover to power on because the metal lip at the bottom is deformed and blocking it, and several other challenges, this new core can’t even get GPS signal. I really want this to work but it’s hard arguing with the naysayers in my circle when I’m paying landscapers to mow the lawn 1.5 months into this lawnmower journey
@adem781 Not sure if our yards are similar or not, but we have 4 acres that is FILLED with oak trees. In one acre alone we have 48 mature oaks (I know the number because we have landscape lights around everyone). Our home is a quarter mile off the road right in the middle of a thick woods. Most of the yard has sprinklers except down our driveway, so it gets thick. My opinion is the unit can handle it fine with the pro module. The schedule will be your friend. Now if the yard is filled with branches and leaves you will need to clean that up, no way this is going to do it. We had a major ice storm this year and I spent several days cleaning up the mess. Now in the fall I keep it running basically non-stop to mulch leaves, slowly lowering from 4" to 2.7". After a half a dozen times the leaves get pretty mulched then I run the blower; then wash and repeat until snow.
In short this could be an amazing machine - nothing else like it on the market. Hardware, they stand behind it so if something does go wrong, they replace. Software - um…well, less than consistent. When we get a firmware update it’s like putting $1K on black and hoping it hits.
@adem781 - one point on GPS. I had a mother of a time with the GPS UNTIL they sent me the upgraded antennas. I had argued for months the antenna gain was too weak then they sent new upgraded GPS antennas and I have not had a single, and I mean not a single GPS issue. I posted what the antennas are - pretty sure you can pick them up via AliExpress or some other online sources if they are back in stock. A few people on here picked them up themselves after I posted. Not sure if they are mainstream via Yarbo or not yet.
They are actually selling them on their accessories store now. Preorder for June. I truly hope these become the “default” in the box antennas and replacements.
Thanks for your sincere feedback. First, regarding the ongoing GPS issues, we’ve received your recent update and our Field Service Engineer will follow up with you soon to perform further remote diagnostics.
We also take your broader feedback very seriously and completely understand that these are areas we need to continue improving over the long term. We truly appreciate you taking the time to share your experience and suggestions with us.
I personally would buy 3. But if your DC has most of the constellations CNR values above 40 and your DC has a completely unobstructed view of the sky, then you’d be fine without upgrading the DC antenna. Which you’ll have to find some way to support the HaLow antenna if you don’t have the old clip style support and instead have the stabilizer bar.
Have to wait till my local reseller will get those …
Is there anything worth looking at on AliExpress? I have seen various links here in forum, but not sure which are better antennas which fits without any magic.
Yesterday broke one of my antennas and now yarbo is veeeeery picky on GPS.
Already ordered new antennas from my local reseller (to be able to mow something), but at the same time figuring out on how to improve the GPS signal on rover as I have quite many trees in my yard + I’m also mowing close to building walls and there GPS coverage and accuracy is a disaster.
