Tip: Getting the rover into good GPS regularly while mowing an Area can help with weak GPS spots
There’s a line of spruce trees, what we call our Christmas Trees, next to my front lawn with a 2nd driveway beyond.
I mapped an Area to mow the 2nd driveway, and it worked well.
I had a narrow Area mapped to mow around those trees, and the rover generally lost GPS around the 3rd tree (yellow splotches), often needing a GPS rescue operation. I’d have 3-4 or so GPS rescues to perform with Smart Vision for each mow around those trees.
There’s a good GPS spot in behind the first tree and in much of that 2nd driveway, especially beyond the 4th and 5th trees. The nicely mowed front lawn part (I know a lawn guy) is also good GPS. Under/around the trees themselves not so much.
The Yarbo has a navigation buffer of sorts which allows it to get through weak GPS spots. Clearly this wasn’t working great in my Spruce Tree Area with all those GPS rescues.
I wondered if there was a way I could make this buffer work better so I wouldn’t have as many GPS rescues to perform.
Yes.
As I have space on either side of that line of trees that I already mow, I deleted the separate Spruce Tree and 2nd Driveway Areas and mapped a single Area around all that, including some of the front lawn in an overlap. This meant that while mowing the rover would be passing over the good GPS areas at the edge of the front lawn and in the 2nd driveway, boosting the rover’s navigation buffer periodically. The Yarbo would then have a higher chance of a better navigation buffer while mowing around the trees where GPS tends to fall off.
That was the theory anyway.
Test mow 1 had one small GPS hiccup the rover complained about but recovered from on its own. Hey, wow, well, that’s not too shabby.
I called that a win, so I changed the map a tiny bit, mostly to update the No-go Zones around the trees and to add a Deadend, and I ran the Work Plan twice over a few days.
Test mow 2…3…NO GPS hiccups. Wut?
Heck, I can’t even map a No-go Zone under one of the trees because the GPS is that bad! But I can mow it now.
If you have some extra space near a spot that has some GPS signal issues, try creating an Area that around that spot which can bring good GPS to the party.
If you don’t have the extra space, perhaps this Tip can give you some ideas about how to lay out your Areas to allow the rover to replenish its navigation buffer to get through GPS rough patches.
Same trees, November 2016. They grow up so fast.