Just a rant about Yarbo, maybe it’s my fault, maybe I’m expecting too much, I don’t know. But the past 2-3 days of cuts have been pretty bad. I had to cut the lawn myself today due to missed areas. I don’t have “large yard” issues, I’m less 5k square feet of lawn, it’s smooth, manicured, fertilized, the works. Nassau county LI, NY.
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Yarbo has just been giving me a hard time with mapping and setup. It’s constantly running into my shed and just stops, no warning, no slipped tracks. It just keeps hitting and hitting and stops. It drives into the fence constantly, same thing. Then it just randomly avoids obstacles that don’t exist. Drives into my mulch bed. Drives into the corner of the house. Drives itself off the curb, beaches itself like a whale. Constantly misses corners, sections of lawn, can’t really decipher some dead ends. I mapped it, it must exist. I’ve spend hours today staring at Yarbo, tweaking the map, dead ends, paths, the works. I have no idea what I’m doing wrong. I don’t even know if it’s me. Sometimes it looks like Yarbo doesn’t know where the back of it is. It’ll sideswipe the fence and try to correct itself, and just burn a hole in the lawn. The one thing Yarbo has been consistent with, is it’ll burn a hole in my lawn like nothing else. Most recently, Yarbo will return to the charger and say it’s charging, show that it’s charging, and the following day I realized that it wasn’t charging 
. That only happened once, so maybe user error on my part. I’ve attached a few pics of the property and my map. I have no idea where my issues are, maybe the app should be more intuitive, I have no clue. I mapped the lawn as if I was mowing. My lawnmower doesn’t make sharp turns well, so I mapped Yarbo the same way. Wide sweeping turns, no right up against borders. I don’t mind edging, it’s usually around 30 minutes of work instead of hours. Do I need to pay for someone to redo my installation? Walk me through programming?
Your pictures didn’t come through, unfortunately, but I’ll throw you my two cents.
I have a small Area next to a pool shaped like a grand piano, and Yarbo does perfectly fine every single time – which astonishes me. Part of it’s sandwiched by a fence, too. That’s not to say that my rover doesn’t do awful stuff like yours does…and it does, usually in bad GPS locations.
What I would do:
- Change the Obstacle Avoidance setting to Gentle Contact. Missing spots is usually Vision sending the rover around what usually amounts to ghosts or are fences or objects outside the Area boundary. If you need Vision on, use No-vision Zones to keep the rover from running away from something.
- As the rover runs a Work Plan (or even driving it around to various spots manually) observe the GPS information on the Diagnostics screen – HeadingDop higher than, say, 2.0 is often a good indicator. When GPS signal starts getting bad, the rover is supposed to go as far as it can SAFELY and then stop to wait for a better signal. The rover sometimes does not stop when it really should, something I’ve been calling the “GPS Threshold” issue. This could be impacting you. Also check your HaLow (Connection true and Signal -60 or higher (0 is best)).
- Another thing that can bite you is to have No-go Zones between Deadend endpoints, but this doesn’t sound like your case.
I think your case could be a little Vision but more likely GPS signal issues.
Of course you could have some other issues in your setup or network, or your map could be drawn oddly, so it would be great to see that if you can try pasting the pictures into the post again.
Thanks for the info. I have it set to gentle contact. lol. I don’t know why it just decides to ram itself into things. Legit like a billy goat, back and forth into the side of the shed. I’ll have the monitor the diagnostics page, but my property doesn’t have much tree coverage or overhangs, I’ve only lost gps while mapping in one area, that’s on a pathway for the breezeway that attaches the rear yard to front yard. I also saw a post about cleaning the cameras, I will try that also. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE this thing, it’s just the little oddities that are annoying. It’s just a time thing, between work and kids, I don’t really have the time to stare at Yarbo work. I’m hoping for the app to fill in the blanks. Like we can add a satellite image onto our map, you plan the work areas, maybe Yarbo suggests a path idea. Or you do what path works for you and it uses vision to fine tune it. Or maybe Yarbo has a learning feature, the more it mows, the more it fine tunes to create a better quality cut. It’s like the self driving feature on some cars now, it’s scary how good it is, it’s just not 100% but it’s soooooo close.
Some brain-dumpy thoughts…
- In the map it looks like a big No-go Zone that goes close to the edges of an Area. Use Preview to see how the rover will navigate that. The rover’s navigation can get REALLY odd if it’s squeezed between a No-go Zone and an Area boundary. I suspect this is a driveway and you mow the edges, which is not a bad way to handle that case, but make sure the rover is comfortable navigating those thin strips.
- I noticed some jagged edges – the Area on the top right. There’s a jaggy thing along the bottom boundary. There’s another jaggy thing in the thin handle of the Area next to the pool. If those jagged lines indicate the rover has backed up a little or double-backed over its boundary, that creates a navigation issue we call “The Dancing Bug.” Yarbo should be fixing that, but setting Boundary Set Back to non-zero is a workaround. You can also use Edit Area or re-map to get rid of those. That’s if they indicate the rover backed up during mapping or mapped over itself. They may just be very tight turns (you’d have to zoom in on the map to see).
- The other places could very well be Vision, like with my chicken wire fence. It’s Gentle Contact, and I even put a No-vision Zone there, but when the rover is NAVIGATING by it (not when it’s mowing, which is fine), the rover dances. I’ve also see things with harsh light differences like – yep – a white fence.
– Here’s an experiment: In addition to using the Gentle Contact setting in Obstacle Avoidance, put a No-vision Zone on top of where the rover starts to miss things or get weird (you put No-vision Zones on top of where the rover drives when you want it to “close its eyes”). Will No-vision Zones help?
– Here’s an experiment: Try mowing on a cloudy day or as the sun is setting and there’s less harsh sun + shadow. If the rover behaves itself, you likely have narrowed the cause of at least some of your weirdness to Vision. - Yes, if the rover misbehaves (leaves the boundary, gets into your flowers, misses grass, etc), it’s generally weak GPS, caused by a structure close to where you’re mowing, structures close together, or something overhead. You’ll need to watch the rover’s behavior to determine where your GPS is not great, and, yep, use the Diagnostics screen.
– Where I have GPS issues at my Christmas Trees, I’m going to try a fix by making that Area larger to get the rover into good GPS signals during the mowing so it has enough GPS “buffer” to make it through the bad signal areas. It may work, may not. I can also try different mowing patterns. We’ll see what works. Maybe that will trigger an idea for you.
– Here’s an experiment: Try different mowing patterns where you have bad GPS. Maybe a particular mowing pattern will get the rover into enough “good” GPS.
– Here’s an experiment: Push the rover away from bad GPS spots with No-go Zones so you don’t have to re-map – you can just use No-go Zone templates. See if it can complete mowing without intervention or going crazy, and without you re-mapping anything.
– If you figure out ways to get the rover mowing consistently without going crazy, you’ll need to figure out how to deal with what the rover can’t quite get. I’d suggest trying Deadends created where GPS is good, and make them as straight as possible. I have a Tip post out here (search for Tip) about how to stagger parallel Deadends so they’re easier on your lawn. Deadends ignore No-go Zones, so you can put them where you’re pushing the rover away as it’s mowing an Area. MAYBE there’ll be enough GPS buffer in the rover to mow a Deadend…MAYBE.
Well, I’m just throwing out ideas. I think I’d work on the Vision stuff first and see if that resolves some of your issues, then look for GPS weak spots and see if my ideas or anyone else’s can help you map this so the rover will mow everything for you.
You have an amazing looking lawn and beautiful property. Very nice.
@Ken Great suggestions. I plan on trying a few on my property. I have a big metal shed that is less than ideal for GPS signals. Mowing near it is a challenge. You have have fixed one of my problems. Thank you for the “brain dump”. Many things to try…
The no-go zone in added a while ago when I had paths setup for the snowblower, I could probably delete it, but there’s always cars there. I just left it because that side of the lawn a never an issue. I maneuvers along just fine.
The jagged sections are my fault, when mapping, I do a long sweeping turn, but then it never gets close enough to the fence, so I back it up to re-align the mower to have a straight line. I could re-map and get rid of the jagged parts and then add a dead end.
I have to mess around with the no vision setting, I honestly haven’t tried that at all.
So tonight I finally stared at Yarbo cut. Every inch, in and out of settings. worst gps setting I’ve gotta are about -55, but it didn’t mess up there. I just realized my issues aren’t the main lawn front map, it’s just the dead ends and the parkway strips. It leave a 4” border at the end of the parkway strips even though I map past it. I was thinking that I mapped too close to the fence, my dead ends are off by about 6-8 inches, so the dead ends are running into the fence, even though I didn’t map it that way. I re-mapped the backyard with Yarbo going over the edge of the paver patio for a cleaner look, there’s a 4” border where it didn’t mow. It’s like after I mapped, there was a shift of the entire map. So every dead end I’ve made that’s close to a fence, or part of a paver wall, Yarbo wants to run into it as part of the plan to align itself with the dead end. Also, once it gets stuck in a dead end, it’s hell to get it to skip it and move on. Just jack and forth, clear it, move it, it runs into the fence again, clear it again, this time move it forward instead of back. It’s so close to being perfect! The neighbors love it and think it’s the coolest thing, and it is. But I see the little defects in the lawn and it’s killing my OCD
And my newest glitch!!! It’ll finish the entire front lawn and sidewalk strips, then just throw me a fault that it can’t calculate a path back! Wtf, it made it all the way to the end!!! Just retrace your steps Yarbo!!!
Keep plugging away at it, @sewnarine.durga.
- Deadends being off track: Yeaahhhh, been there, done that. I’ll map one, TEST, and it bumps into something instead of following the EXACT track I want. Here’s the trick: Test it again. Often it works, and “some of the time” it’ll work with just a little bump with the bumper. If it’s not working at least most of the time, yeah, re-map the Deadend. I finally got tired of re-re-re-mapping the Deadends and stood back for a second and watched the behavior. I decided that if it’s working at least some of the time, the rest of the time can be Gentle Contact with the bumper, and it wiggles around and then follows the track. I don’t have any Ming vases in my yard. Most of my Deadends mow the same every time. The ones that don’t are usually next to a wall or fence on the right (I have seen behavior to indicate Deadends behave differently right vs. left obstacles and right vs. left turns – could be because of where the primary antenna is, could be the algorithms, I don’t know).
- Can’t find the way back: Yeaahhhh, been there, done that, although not for quite a while because, you know, my maps are perfect. Did the rover somehow get out of bounds, maybe slide on something? How you “fix” that is to drive the rover to the spot where it stopped, and hit Recharge. If it goes home, you’re good, and hopefully what you saw was a one-off. If it doesn’t go, move the rover back in your navigation path, like to the prior Area. Hit Recharge. If it goes, you know the problem is between you and the end. If it doesn’t go, move back again, until you find where the rover is able to navigate. You can narrow down the issue in this way, and then you can examine your map to figure out what may be wrong. Usually it’s a Pathway that’s doesn’t have an endpoint in the “meat” (not overlap!) of an area a few feet. I suspect if you’re using a Deadend that it went a little out of bounds that time. It’ll be interesting to see what you find.
Regarding the recharge feature, doesn’t matter where I put the rover in the map, it only figures out recharge if I put it on the path to/from the main lawn. As far as the dead ends, that’s a job for another day, I’ll get to it at some point. We’re expecting some rain for the next few days. I’ll probably make a plan with the affected dead ends only to try and expedite the process of me watching it.
Nah, get to this stuff when you have time. I’m retired.
Recharge should work wherever you put your rover in your map, unless you intentionally have a separate and unconnected section, which is OK to do, as you can just drive the rover manually (Smart Vision is great for this).
Retired = No place to be and all day to get there…