Forgive if any of this is already in place, as it’s been a year since I had the opportunity to use the snow blower last. In my area we get a lot of wet sticky snow. I spent a decent amount of time unclogging while waiting for the snow plow shipments to ship. Here are a few suggestions based on that experience.
Whenever there is an auger overcurrent due to excessive build up plugging the snow chute, I would like to propose the following automatic steps to try and clear the clog. First, the unit should halt the auger. After it stops, it should then start backing up while simultaneously reversing the auger. At the same time it should spin the snow chute several times left and right to its full range of motion. I have often noticed when clogged (or about to clog) that when the chute spins the other direction, a wall of slush is left free standing and often falls out. It would also be a good idea for the chute to spin more frequently when the unit is backing up to preemptively clear any build up.
When backing, if there is not enough room to back up the unit, then it should back up as far as it can while completing the unclog maneuvers. Once completed, it should start the auger in normal operation and see if it is no longer in overcurrent, if it is, complete the steps one additional time and check again before pausing the plan and sending a push notification alert to the owner.
If the overcurrent has cleared, the unit should resume forward motion and continue the plan uninterrupted.
Thank you for taking the time to share your detailed suggestion. We really appreciate the thought and experience behind it. I’ll discuss this with our support and product teams to review its feasibility and see how we can potentially improve the unclogging process.
First snow up in Summit county CO with 2-3” of slush under 4-6 of snow..
Yarbo had no chance. Defaulted back to gas blower which was not easy either. As the Yarbo charged on its dock, it then froze up. I ran the plan just to see it run, auger all frozen but the Yarbo kept trying to do its job.. If I was not there watching it, I could see it burning out its motor.
Auger should stop if not spinning, try reverse but if not working, stop!
Send an alert to the app to rescue it. If not rescued, it should head back to dock after 10-15 min so it is not stranded in the middle of the driveway, sidewalk.
The auger should not be attached to a cogged belt, it should be allowed to slip if jammed.
That said you need to offer replacement parts 100% of the parts in the Yarbo.
Hi there, do you have Anti-Freeze Mode enabled? This feature may help prevent the issue from occurring. Thank you for your suggestions as well — I’ll share them with our team.
A question and it may not be doable…… could we have sensors of some kind when a shear pin snaps and only one auger is spinning would be nice if it told you… i did 3 neighbors driveways and when it came home the shear pin broke and all it did was push snow mounds on the driveway sighhh
My Yarbo broke the sheer pins on one side of the auger, and it happily kept trying to complete the job. It was running like that for a while before I noticed and stopped it.
Thanks for the suggestion — that’s a really thoughtful idea. I’ll make sure to share your feedback with our product team so they can look into the feasibility of adding a feature like this.
