Snow Throw Direction With A Frosty Snow Blast Direction Indicator

Yarbo Product Talk Yarbo Snowblower
1

This so far off anyone radar but It would be neat to see which way the snow was being thrown as I giggle and stare at the map.

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2

A real time chute directional indicator on the little yarbo would be kinda cool.

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3

Compass rose with the chute direction displayed?

Might as well show discharge angle too.

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4

That’s a neat idea

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5

I can imagine additional sensors being added to future hardware. But my unit doesn’t have it and I need a solution to the constant editing of “throw direction”. Before each job, I need to set the snow throw direction. I have two large areas that have thousands of square feet each and wind is a big issue for a successful clearing. I also have to decide which area is cleared first and then manually sort them in the job schedule.

What I would prefer is to set snow throw direction for an area (e.g., a rectangle with the E and W sides marked as “throw here”). This would be the “acceptable directions” but not necessarily the used directions for each clearing. Instead, before each job, I get asked “what about the wind?”. I say 10MPH from the NW, 2MP from the SE, or even ‘negligible’. Whatever it is. Then Yarbie takes that into consideration and

  1. uses the wind as a key component to decide where to throw the snow amongst the options for the area. I can’t make snow fly against the wind so I might as well use it.
  2. The angle of the chute changes depending on the wind. A long distance from the target? Send the snow up into the wind. Need to push a little against the wind? Put that chute angle to the lowest setting.
  3. The “center” of a circular path would deviate from the center to accommodate the wind’s angle and intensity and the path angles would change for the same reason

For overlapping areas, obviously snow can be sent from one area to another so it would be best to be smart about this as well.

The paths already take several seconds to calculate (on my phone, in the cloud?). I’d wait much longer if I didn’t have to constantly adjust the snow throw areas and re-order the areas in the schedule.

Could this task be automated? Perhaps! My neighbour (a farmer) has a Davis WeatherLink station. This reports fairly up to date weather details that include the wind direction and intensity. Given change is a constant, a polling of the weather station at the start of a job might allow me to run my schedule using the timer! And multiple jobs lined up over several hours would have a great chance of getting the best results.

Thanks for reading this far!

6

I’ve been wanting a better understanding of the diverter angle too, and it’s not available in the diagnostics. At least exposing those there would be helpful for me, but a GUI update would be nice. :+1:

7

What does setting the diverter angle actually do? I haven’t watched it closely enough, but how or when does yarbo decide to adjust the angle within the range you specify? Just curious.

8

I found in most cases anything above ~30 doesn’t throw as far. I have most of my plans set with ~27 as the lowest and highest value to get “max distance”. Some of my pathways I lower it all the way down so snow doesn’t end up where I don’t want it. One of my sidewalks is next to our garden fence so I bumped it up to ~30* to clear over top.

The wiki and the response to my comment are sorta vague… How to Adjust the Snow Deflector Angle for Optimal Throwing Distance | Yarbo Wiki

9

I would even like the ability to start with a low angle to keep the snow in the current area and only raise it near the last couple passes to get the snow as far away as possible. But I just bring out the Greenworks or mega-Yarbo when needed.

10

Its wild how over developed something like the Chute angle is, while other key functions are still quite basic.

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11

Hi there, thank you very much for taking the time to share such a detailed and thoughtful suggestion on optimizing snow-throwing direction. We understand how incorporating factors like wind direction and intensity into route planning and snow-throwing logic could be helpful, especially for large areas and changing conditions.

This is an interesting and inspiring idea, and while it’s not something we’re able to support in the short term, we’ll make sure your feedback is shared with the team for consideration. We really appreciate you taking the time to outline your thoughts and use case in such detail.

Thanks again for your valuable input.

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