A sensor that reports how wet the grass is before mowing. If there’s a user-specified amount of moisture on the grass, the mower Work Plans are not run until the moisture falls below that threshold.
Currently Yarbo has a rain sensor on the mower module and an option for “Mowing in the rain,” which is OFF by default. The sensor tells only part of the story. Often the rain sensor is bone dry but the grass is soaked. Overnight lawns often get a ton of moisture and aren’t dry enough to mow until several hours after sunrise.
Two ways I thought to do this:
A sensor in a fixed spot on the lawn, integrated with the App. Yarbo could integrate with a 3rd party sensor through APIs (if such an item even exists - I haven’t looked).
Folks are looking at how to use the extra ports on the mower head, yes? Tack a grass moisture sensor on there (somehow), start the Work Plan, get the rover to the Area, and take the reading using that on-board instrument. Continue the Work Plan if the moisture level is below a user-specified threshold. Maybe it’s enough to drag a mower head sensor through the grass, then rotate it out of the way.
If the user is running a Work Plan manually and the lawn is too wet, give the user a warning and Cancel / Continue Anyway options.
If the Work Plan is scheduled but the grass exceeds the dampness threshold, delay the schedule, check conditions periodically, run when appropriate.
In the mean time, I hope that once the API is available, then 3rd party platforms like Home Assistant could easily be leveraged to enable or disable a schedule. Home Assistant has a lot of supported integrations and sensors and would make something like this pretty straightforward.
Yah, what I was thinking for integrating with a 3rd party product. Sounds like there is something there that one could integrate with then, although that’s a soil meter, not the grass itself, but who knows. Yarbo could get a relationship with Ecowitt and create something for the grass.
Honestly API and home assistant support would be the best approach. Those wanting this type of integration already have the knowledge and capability to leverage it if it was available. It’s the quickest path to yes. Yarbo doesn’t need to make or natively integrate all solutions.
I currently use the WH51(s) with my HA and Rachio integration. The rain skip settings in the rachio app just couldn’t handle the actual localized rainfall vs the forecasted rainfall from the weather service. I ended up just making my own module/package. In GA, rain is constantly in the forecast but often zero rain actually hits the ground in my area. I use the the ecowitt GW1100 gateway to gather the moisture readings for each zone to water when the moisture reading drops below 40%. So far that has worked better than any solution(s) offered by manufacturers and its easier to adapt for other use cases like mowing.
I don’t disagree that an API for use with some home automation system like Home Assistant, Hubitat, etc would be a bad idea and they should offer that service but running a HAS is a lot of overhead for someone who buys this just to cut their grass. They need to offer this as an add-on integrated natively into their ecosystem in my opinion.
I use Rachio irrigation controller as well and echo your thought. A simpler approach for Yarbo would be to integrate with a weather service and skip schedule runs on rainy days and on days when the grass is wet. This can potentially avoid using a separate sensor and can easily be automated within the app itself.
I also feel that soil moisture level/sensor is not an accurate measure of grass dryness. On a hot sunny day, the grass is dry enough to be mowed 2-3hrs after rain, but the soil may still be wet.
