Cameras - and even the entire Yarbo - can frequently get caked in snow and ice. This requires owner intervention. While I like my Yarbo, he lives outside in the cold during the winter! Sometimes I plan not to be near him. So what could be done …?
It might be worth trying to strategically embedding a few vibrators in the Yarbo core and snow blower. If there is any ice build up (or on some sort of schedule), the signal is sent to initiate a vibration session. Dump trucks use it to dislodge sticky loads. With the advent of smart phones, they are produced by the 100s of millions of units per year. Maybe they are cheap, reliable, easy to program and easy to install?
Is ice build up a top shelf issue?
Can these little units solve the problem?
If you haven’t already proven they don’t work as hoped, would you consider giving them a try in future hardware prototypes?
Note: watch slow motion videos of dogs shaking the water off their bodies - it’s organized chaos that gets the best results.
Note2: CES 2026 had a new electronically resonating kitchen knife that made the act of cutting a different experience. It was vibrating at wildly high frequencies (30KHz?) - so there may be a spectrum of approaches needed to find an acceptable solution.
2 Likes
The core mostly self sheds from my experience but the S1 module could definitely use something like that…as long as it doesn’t wear out the attachment points to the core, would definitely make an interesting R&D project for the Yarbo engineers
Side note: I’m really annoyed I overlooked that ultrasonic vibrating knife at CES this year. Would have loved to try it. The founder posted an interesting video about it.
Thank you for taking the time to share such thoughtful and detailed feedback with us. We really appreciate you thinking creatively about ways to improve the Yarbo experience, especially in challenging winter conditions.
At the moment, ice buildup is not considered a top-priority issue for us, although we do recognize that it can require manual intervention in certain environments. We also haven’t tested or implemented vibration-based solutions like the ones you described, so we can’t yet comment on their real-world effectiveness or long-term impact on the hardware.
That said, your idea is interesting, and we value hearing perspectives like this from engaged users. I’ll be happy to share your thoughts with our team so they’re aware of the concept, particularly if more users express similar interest or encounter the same challenges.
Thanks again for taking the time to reach out and for supporting Yarbo.
2 Likes