Had a power outage at my house while the rover was docking. It seems the Rover is not able to identify that the dock has no power. When it could not get a lock to start the charging it decided to take new paths around the docking station and got into a fight with my doghouse shade cover. It won.
What are the mechanisms it uses to dock and initiate charging?
Is it true that the rover can’t identify a no power condition at the dock?
Can something be done in software to recognize a no dock power condition, stop the docking process, and send a notification?
I have observed similar behavior. My charger is plugged in at a handy location for others in my family who take little care to replace things as they were found…
I had a great spot for the base charger and its cord with an outlet that nobody cared about, but zero turns dug a whole in the grass there and I’m letting the grass recover there before winter.
A sincere thank you to @Ryan for the “pre-winter” reminder to repair those pesky zero turn areas now, before they are mud pits for the whole of winter.
The rover uses GPS to get to the dock and spin around. Insert shameless plug here for the option to back directly onto the dock and not spin. After it starts backing, it checks the magnetic sensors to align itself. When it stops, it checks GPS to see its alignment, and then continues to back onto the dock and only uses the magnetic sensors at this point. If the dock wasn’t powered, it wouldn’t get the inductive coil readings (I believe) to determine its dock location. It will wiggle and shimmy and do all sorts of corrections to try and get a reading (I’m assuming since it does this when it is powered). I’m sure this is an edge case they haven’t considered. Therefore, unpredictable behavior.
My understanding is the dock is pretty dumb but there is some Bluetooth connectivity of some sort. They should be able to detect this as least and stop the docking process if it’s not reading it. Especially if the magnetic sensors aren’t picking anything up either.
Hum, sounds like a safety issue to me (for real this time… not like zero-turns…)
We need at the very least a notification for power loss. Usually with my husqvarna and Landroid, power-loss at the base = robot stops until power resumes. I think this should be the case here too. Yarbo is big and it can’t start wandering around with no guidence. Someone could get hurt.
In this instance, coincidental power loss at time of docking is pretty edge, but there are a number of other ways this could happen. GFCI trips, breaker trips, dock hardware failure… Or, “someone” just unplugs it for an outlet to charge her phone
Curious if your DC would have been up or down at the time as a result of the power loss. To @Micke point, it should have stopped because of loss of GPS correction data. However if it was actually in the process of docking an already on the dock, it may have bypassed any current safeties at that point and maybe they need to add another check or at least limit the amount of travel for the corrections it makes to dock itself.
Ryan and ken.w.gregory, I’ve used this… and it prevents the zero turn damage. It has saved my grass from getting torn up. The tracks leading up to it are another matter, but not severe.
Thanks for the suggestion, glad you’ve found a patch for the damage. I’m going to have to add some power further away from the house this off season. It’s the only way to get the frequent paths away from bad astetic locations.
