There should be an option to clear the perimeter only.
I live in a region that has alot of wind. When it snows the snow continues to blow in the driveway for hours after it stops snowing. (I live in the prairies).. I have a large driveway that needs to be cleared and 80% of it does not need to be cleared after it stops snowing … Just the perimeter.. It takes about 90+ mins to clear the whole area, between charging and clearing the whole area that can take upwards of 4 hours.
It would make sense to just clear the perimeter every few hours instead of doing the entire area. have a setting where you are able to do 2-3 perimeters would make the most sense.
Thank you for your suggestion and for providing such a detailed explanation of your situation. It really helps us understand the challenges you’re facing. We see how clearing just the perimeter could be a great solution for your area, especially with the snow and wind conditions.
We’ll be sure to pass your feedback along to our app team for consideration, and we hope to implement this feature in the future.
Would putting a Sidewalk around your Area as a perimeter achieve what you are looking for? You could then schedule just the Sidewalk until you were ready to do the Area.
Doing a Sidewalk before an Area like that has the added benefit of giving Yarbo a little room to move without so much snow when it goes to clear the Area.
I would need to do several “sidewalks” next to each other.. Depending on snow conditions and wind it may only need to do 2 rounds other days it may need to do 4…
That is alot of messy work to do with the current method of setting up compared to clicking a check box and selecting how many perimeters should be done..
Not downplaying your suggestion at all as it will work.. and its a great helpful idea.. But I cannot be the only person that will have this issue and a well rounded polished product should have an allowance to do this without the workaround/hack. (I know its a new product that is still growing that is why I put it up as a suggestion.)
You’re not the first to suggest this and won’t be the last. It’s a great one and I think has enough merit that it will make the list. But, probably not until next winter.
This topic seems to have withered so I’m hoping to revive it for new users like me. Turns out that I’m in the same boat. My perimeter gets built up with snow due to wind. BUT … This is not normal fluffy or wet snow. This is the fines that get created from tumbling flakes that get broken down close to the size of table salt crystals. When they fall over your snow bank, they fall out of the wind and start to build up. This snow packs differently and is very likely to cause “track slippage”. It needs to be handled differently than freshly fallen snow and we need a software solution.
First, I’ll make sure the problem is understood:
The wind-blown snow is made up of fine crystals and acts like a surface of marbles when it gets disturbed
It has structure. This is the snow that igloos are made out of and can be cut with a saw to form blocks. Not strong blocks, but, just strong enough. When Yarbie runs a perimeter pass at the start of a job, it can get pinned at a turn point. It can also get pinned if it gets knocked off the target path and tries to re-orient itself. Even 2-3 inches of this stuff can overpower the turning power (on the fines just disturbed - see point 1!). But when it’s 10“ or 14”, we have a real problem. The snow becomes a straight jacket and Yarbie repeatedly gets stuck.
So what could a solution be? How about let me have a “snow drift” setting?
This would activate a special set of behaviours.
A) paths are very tricky since they are narrow and can be filled completely with the fines. Getting deflected off course puts you into “deep old snow” and off the previously packed paths. To avoid this issue, maybe a “rocking motion” needs to be used. 4” forward, 3” back, 5” forward, 3” back. Maybe these numbers can be jiggled by me? Slow? Yes! But I’m looking for reliable.
B) area cleaning needs to start from the inside out. Let me input “start x feet from the perimeter” and have the overlap fairly small.
C) attack in straight lines and veer to the center to get away from the disturbed snow. When at a corner, pivoting is ill-advised. Instead, continue past and come back around at the new angle.
So the primary goal is to clear the snow without having me pull him out of a snow bank. We need to have him be self sufficient more often. If it takes more time, I’ll make that trade.
one thing that would be a tremendous help… Would be the ability to export and import maps with paths and a detailed document on the file format so that the paths could be edited and optimized by hand instead of the janky logic that is currently being used…
Let the community come up with map editors for PC’s instead of a phone and the requirement of Yarbo being able to get there…
How do you edit a map if there is a snowbank that has encroached on the edge? You start a whole new map… Walk the whole perimeter in the cold…
Setting a No-go zone at the edge is So damn hard to do using the UI on a phone…. Its a crap work around that is painful to use and you end up with a no-go zone thats much larger than you need and it either doesn’t fully cover the area or covers more of the area that you need.
For now, the best way to handle this situation is to edit the map area in question, and increase the safety buffer by maybe 12 inches or so. That will effectively shrink the entire perimeter of that work area, so Yarbo should therefore naturally avoid the snowbank.
Once it’s safe for Yarbo to resume clearing the entire perimeter again, edit the area’s map again and remove the buffer.
That doesn’t work… Its already shrunk the maximum amount and there is more snow coming… and I already have 3 areas that are on top of each other so I basically have to start to delete and add new areas now…. And I can’t edit the exsisting area because I cannot get yarbo to cross a boundry that is in a place that it can no longer navigate due to a packed snowdift…
Yea, if you’re already shrunk down to the maximum, there’s nothing more you can do that way. I normally keep mine at zero, so it’s easy to quickly add some buffer if I have snowbanks or whatever that I need Yarbo to temporarily avoid.
Some people have created separate ‘sidewalk’ zones deliberately to manage their perimeters. I haven’t done it myself, but I’ve heard good things from others.
I wish I could help you more. Can’t think of anything else programmatically that you can do. Hopefully someone else will think of something.
Yeah I don’t understand the reluctance to add the option for more perimeter passes and for executing only perimeter laps. This makes sense for mower too, so its not like its a winter only feature. Let me be able to execute plans with the perimeter laps enabled or disabled and also execute perimeter only plans. I’ve seen numerous request for more perimeter laps on both M1 and S1 modules. Makes sense to me.
From the comfort of a warm place inside, park the core near the edge as a reference of where it can go,
then make one or two or three No-Goes from template. I agree that creating one probably never fits well; I find that making several smaller ones is much, much easier. And thanks to the new shortcuts on the map screen, now it’s easy to move the core to new reference points.
no go zones do not worked when you are forced to make them at maximum zoomed out level on a phone none the less… There is just no humanly possibly way to do anything with a template on a phone when you have a yard thats over 5 acres and your forced at maximum zoomed out level and your fingers are not transparent so that you can see what you are doing or where your placing the zone.
Thank you for taking the time to explain your suggestion so clearly — we understand the challenges you’re describing, especially when working with larger properties or trying to make precise edge adjustments on a phone.
At the moment, features such as map export/import and external PC-based editing tools are relatively lower priority compared to other ongoing improvements. We appreciate your understanding, and we truly value the detailed feedback you’ve provided.
Tap the locate button if your rover is near where you want to place the NGZ and it will zoom in. Otherwise tap into the area so it takes focus off the NGZ template and then you can pinch to zoom in and out. Tap back on the NGZ to adjust that the same way.
that is very unintuitive… but again goes back to one of my main points… Workarounds seem to be the only solution as problems are being hidden by workarounds and no work is being done to fix issues when there is a workaround that can be used.
Workarounds should be a stop gap until a problem is fix… not the resolution for the problem.
this post 