during these New England snow storms, including the one two weeks ago with nearly two feet of snow, the Yarbo has been performing perfectly. This weekend about 6” to 8” more snow and I sent it out twice - it took it’s usual route which is an anticlockwise clearing around the perimeter and then works its way across the larger part of the driveway and eventually up and down the longer section. No issues what-so-ever.
Just after it came back from the second run of the morning, there was a firmware update. It applied and less than an hour later I sent it out again after the snow. For the first time ever, it’s going clockwise around the driveway, seems to have a very different strategy where it was locked in on one for the last 12 or 15 runs previously. It now seems to have no idea what to do with the chute. It is stopping, powering off the auger, turning the chute, spinning up again and moving forward a foot, turning off the motor moving the chute again and does this every single time in the exact same specific places of the driveway. This is it’s new strategy.
The worst part of that is it goes from chucking the snow where it’s meant to go and be done with forever, to flipping the chute over so it throws snow into it’s future work path and then switches back again a few more feet along. It also took this opportunity to crash into snow banks consistently that it do before, and then to top it off decided for the first time ever that it ‘saw a person’ when no one was there. Just a large empty driveway. Amazing really as it was reporting camera failure too.
I have opened a ticket but I am venting because I was having such wonderful luck with this device, it was basically flawless and suddenly right after this last firmware it is like it has completely lost it’s sensibilities. The constant rotating of the chute from where it ‘makes sense’ to when it doesn’t and it always seems to power everything down to do this now. There are optimizations they can make but this isn’t it. It is taking longer to do and I have lost trust in it so I am having to observe it more - I could and did get to a point I could trust it and it worked every time. Kind of wish I hadn’t updated the firmware but it also gave me the A B testing with the same snow and map. No other changes. I am very disappointed in this latest update.
Anyone else downloaded the v3.12.0 firmware and seen this rapid and sudden change of behavior with the work plan?
I too have observed the ‘differences’ in Yarbo’s behavior with the new firmware. And I share the same thoughts - Yarbo had become extremely reliable because I had learned how it worked, and had developed work plans that were based on that accumulated knowledge.
Then after the firmware update, it’s sort of back to square one, where you need to learn how the new firmware ‘thinks’ and adjust the work plans accordingly.
Frustrating?? Yes. End of the world? No. BUT I think Yarbo should have warned their user base that this new firmware would likely break some users’ well established workplans.
To add, it’s taking much longer to complete the same area so the process is not an improvement, I did have to slow the speed down as it was going way too fast and stopped adjusting itself while over-stuffing it’s face full of snow. I also thought part of the issue was it just stopping and starting so much more. However on the final clean I watched it travel all the way up the driveway in the middle of an area it had already cleared (so absolutely now snow it front of it) and then turn around and tackle the remaining snow in the other direction. I am baffled why it’s been programmed with this new behavior and ruin its reliability.
Support are examining my unit now remotely, not entirely sure what that is for.
So a couple of changes that I think you are observing. One, the perimeter direction in the area settings defaults to “follow original path” and the option for clockwise and counterclockwise. This could be what changed the direction it was going. Try adjusting this and see if you can get it to do what you want (as it was doing before). Second the chute will not throw snow in the direction of a No Go Zone now. I believe also if the NGZ is outside the area, but still within the distance of the throwing capability. If there is one where it is aimed, it will throw into the area instead and get it on subsequent passes. This is the same behavior with perimeter passes, it will throw into the area if the snow throw isn’t reachable. It will also not throw snow towards vehicle or people. The other thing they added is that it will stop the auger when it cannot reliably spin the chute and not throw snow in an unintended direction. This is intentional in this build. I’m not a fan of that behavior, but it makes sense for safety. I would love the option to be able to toggle the old behavior back on.
I had some workable areas prior to the update but there are way more possibilities now with the new update…I’d give it a solid 75% improvement once you go through and get everything reset up. There are still a couple areas I need to swap settings on if there’s heavy snow or I need it to run faster in light snow but it’s now capable of doing ~60-70% of our snow
For me personally, it’s a good example of “two steps forward, one step back”.
But because there are so many variables in play, and everyone’s driveways are so different, I think it’s hard to test for every possible condition prior to release.
My guess is, for some people, this new release is really really good. But for others, it’s maybe not so good. Lots of variables in play.
What you say makes some sense, although what I see it do makes no sense.There is no ‘no go zone’ for it to avoid. It’s just traveling down the left edge of the driveway, chucking the snow off to the left which is where it should be going, then it stops, moves the chute and starts chucking it to the right for a few feet, stops chucks it left again for a few more feet, and then back to the right the entire rest of the time into where it’s got to move snow from next! The entire time the correct place to send the snow is to its left!
It also doesn’t explain why the robot is traveling over long distance doing no additional work in the middle of an already cleared 4 foot wide path just to turn around and do the work it could have done on the way up there and it still has to come back to do more… so it just looks ‘dumb’
I will look for these other settings about follow original path or clockwise/anticlockwise. I haven’t seen those yet. I am sure I can figure this all out but when you go from something that was rock solid, repeatable and expected, that was a behavior you could rely on. This is a change, that added time, caused me multiple issues and many stops. (I did find the person detection and turned it off, because it was saying it could see [dead] people and halting in wide open, non occupied spaces!)
This was a huge and sudden change, not communicated that it would radically change the experience and caused a reliable process to fail immediately.
It would be nice if the app would log all current settings before a firmware update, both areas and work preferences and do a compare once the new updates are installed. Then when the user opens the app it should go through all changed/new options. Ideally have a way to skip/delay it until later in case a user needs to do something quick and doesn’t want to deal with the updated settings yet.
I’d be curious to see what support says from their review of the logs. That definitely doesn’t sound right. If you don’t mind posting pics of your map and maybe some photos/videos here and maybe the community can see if we see anything obvious?
Hi there — really sorry to hear that this update has caused such frustrating issues for you. We truly understand how disappointing it is when something that was previously reliable suddenly behaves differently.
As Bryan mentioned, regarding the perimeter cleaning direction, you can go to Area Settings and adjust whether the snowblower runs clockwise, counterclockwise, or follows the original mapping path. This may explain the change in direction you’re seeing after the update.
Regarding the snow-throwing behavior, with the latest firmware the snowblower will temporarily stop and adjust the auger/chute in certain locations. This is designed to prevent snow from being thrown into unintended or restricted directions. In the system logic, No-Go Zones also include directions where throwing snow is not allowed, which may account for the behavior you’re seeing.
As for the false human detection, this is not expected behavior and will require further investigation by our support team. Thank you for opening a ticket — that was the correct next step.
We acknowledge that the current logic still has room for improvement, especially for users who had stable and well-established work plans before the update. We appreciate your detailed feedback and will follow up with you as soon as we have more information from our investigation.
Today the left camera is not responding. It has been ‘off’ sitting in a warmish garage until Support asked me to reconnect it. This camera behavior issue is new for me, although I am aware it’s been a problem for a while.
Here are some pictures of my map - using this one to show the time is saw “a person” (and I was the only one here) and a picture out of the upstairs window from the same time.
Two videos here showing the chute behavior. One taken on my phone - the other from a front security camera while the yarbo was at the far end of the driveway. No “No Go Zones” that I can tell are involved in this behavior to explain why it is suddenly doing this but it repeats it in the same spots now.
and note, in the video taken on my phone from the same upstairs window from the image above - it had already cycled the chute from left to right a couple of times before I started the recording. It has no reason whatsoever in that video to need to throw the snow anywhere but to it’s relative left, but it cycled the chute and threw snow to it’s right several times as it went around this curve. This was new behavior.
Final video - here is where I was outside with it on the last ‘clean up’ run. This is where I realized it was traveling with the auger on but not working on any snow, so I recorded what it was up to!
I did speed the middle of this video up for time by scrubbing my iPhone video manually while screen recording. It is however still very clear it the current work plan is extremely inefficient since it should and could have taken a slice out of the snow in the direction of travel to the top of the driveway. This really makes no sense to me.
Hey thanks for documenting all of that. What I think I can tell from the map is it looks like there are throw directions on both sides of the driveway. While I cannot explain why it’s deciding to switch sides, I have observed that behavior last year when I had the throw direction set on both sides of my driveway. Have you tried setting the throw direction to only one side of the driveway? I know it’s not the fix you are looking for given the update changed things, but it might be a work around for now. The other thing with the person detected might be related to the issue with the left core camera. Only support would be able to determine what it actually is seeing from the logs. If you have a date/time of that incident to include in your ticket, they can check.
Yes time of incident will be recorded in the screenshot/picture data, so I have that.
Did the videos play - I think I need to encode them differently. Do you happen to know the best format/method for this forum to upload videos?
As for throwing both sides… both sides are always available. but then why only does it behave strangely at the top of the driveway? It had previously worked fine, and if you look, still does! Look at that video for the traveling without working, it turns around and appropriately throws snow to the side closest from the middle of the area. This is the behavior I mostly observed as it threw snow to both sides well. Counter to the other video near the garage (now fixed) - there is only one side that has a marked direction set - but it chooses to try both? Doesn’t fit that explanation properly… overall just odd.
Video encoding changed, hopefully those play better but quality looks a bit wrecked on one of them. Whatever, it shows what it needs to show.
If you start this work plan, you should be able to see what Yarbo is planning to do by looking at the map and zooming in to see the planned path lines.
I’ve also seen Yarbo make similarly inefficient routing decisions after the last update.
Just what you would expect - “Yarbo is adjusting module” and the new one “Waiting for the chute to reach the requested position”
I did find the settings to clockwise/counterclockwise and returned my area to “counter clockwise” - I just sent the Yarbo out (dry) and the corner there near the garage where it was really flipping the chute from side to side the worst while clockwise; Does not do it at all in the counterclockwise direction. You would think where is throws the snow should not differ… It also gets around the corner with far less adjusting itself. I don’t know what to say about why it does what it does but every bit of logic that has been offered up so far doesn’t really stick.
I did a reboot of the thing as well… and it stopped reporting the left camera is disconnected but then I checked smart vision, and it shows exactly NONE cameras working. After that, left camera disconnected error. I really dislike this update. Way to ruin all the fun and trust.
