To Garage or not to Garage.....That is the Question

Yarbo Product Talk Yarbo Snowblower
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Hi Everyone!

Long time lurker, first time poster here. I have been doing research and watching an egregious amount of review videos for about the last three months. I must say this seems like a pretty insightful and helpful community.

My primary interest is the snowblower and after it feels like it snows here just about every other day, I am kicking myself for still not pulling the trigger on one. My internal struggle is (as my topic states) whether to keep the Yarbo in the garage or outside as it is intended. My two issues with keeping it outside are as follows:

  1. Weather: I understand it’s weather rated and meant to live outside. However we experience insane temperature swings here, from -60F wind-chill in the winter to roughly 120F in the sun where I would place the docking station in the heat of summer. My thoughts are (like a few others have mentioned) is Yarbo is an investment and I feel if I can keep it out of the severe elements and in my climate controlled garage, it will hopefully live a much longer and hopefully relatively bug free life.

  2. Theft: I haven’t really come across mentioning in these forums but it’s a real fear of mine. I work and live in an oil and gas basin. While it brings lots of jobs and opportunity, a long with it comes a lot of crime. I am fortunate and blessed to live in a very nice subdivision but it never fails that people go through the neighborhood once a year breaking into vehicles, sheds, unlocked garages etc and basically grabbing anything they can get their grubby hands on. I realize the unit has anti-theft tracking on it but my fear is people would take it just to take it and destroy it, just to leave it for dead in a ditch somewhere. Yeah, I know, some real contributing members to society out here!

Now if I am reading the forums correctly, I have learned that while not recommended, you can in fact keep the the docking station in the garage. However, in order for it to work you must drive it manually off said docking station and outside to the work area for it to attain a GPS signal. Which is where I struggle. It more or less defeats the purpose of having an autonomous robot snowblower if I have to get up at 4 am in order to get it going and clean the driveway before my wife and kids pack down snow with their vehicles like they are getting paid to do so.

I guess what I am asking here is to those of you who do garage it, is it the end of the world to manually get the unit going? I also saw some chatter on dead reckoning and potential future firmware upgrades where it’s possible to not need GPS to start the job. Is there any truth or progress along these lines?

Thanks in advance for any insight on my silly, but real struggle on pulling the trigger on one of these fancy units!

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Here’s my two cents. Mine sits outside in Central Ohio year round. (At least so far, haven’t owned it a year yet).

So for number 1, I’d leave it outside.

And number 2, the thing is really heavy. It screams bloody murder when it gets removed from the geofence.

If it did get stolen, I’d be willing to bet that you’ll find it 50 to 100 feet down the road.

But yes, it does have geo tracking to find it as long as the battery is connected.

And welcome out of the shadows and into the light. :wink:

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Hi. Welcome to the forum.

While Yarbo is designed to be left outdoors in the elements year round, I would suggest a fabric dog house to shield it from the sun, rain, snow, etc. I don’t think it’s necessary, but similar to owning a nice car - wouldn’t you want to protect it?

You can certainly store and charge your Yarbo in the garage, but there are complications like needing to manually drive it out (as you mentioned) but also Yarbo won’t be able to automatically go charge itself when needed. To me, that would be a dealbreaker.

As for theft, I can certainly see the concern. These things aren’t cheap! Some people (myself included) hide an AirTag inside just in case. But to be honest, Yarbo is very large, bulky, and really heavy. You’d have to be pretty determined to steal one.

Feel free to ask any other questions that come to mind. We love to help.

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I live in WNY and we get a lot of snow. I keep mine in the garage for the reasons you mentioned. Last winter I kept it outside for a while but decided it wasn’t worth it. Snow drifts, sleet, etc.

I never trusted the scheduling features so I’ve never used them and from what I’ve seen in the forum recently the weather alerting/scheduling isn’t reliable.

I get up, open the garage door and send it out. Not a big deal. Once they fix their GPS issues I plan to automate all of this. As it stands you won’t get GPS in your garage. They are testing new antennas and a few people have reported good results with them, including working inside the garage.

Edit: I should mention that I keep the charging pad outside so it can recharge and go home when it’s done working. I then drive it into the garage when I get around to it.

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Thanks for all the kind replies,

Lot of things mentioned I didn’t consider and I appreciate it. The one outdoor spot I had considered and basically the only viable place is prone to massive drifts in the winter so guessing I would spend more time digging it out than I’d like. I suppose if I do give it a shot outside, a guy could maybe just add it into my homeowners policy to put the fear of theft to bed. Some good points were made about it’s weight and alerts if it’s moved as well.

I guess I am secretly hoping maybe I will have decent signal in my garage. It has a lot of windows and high ceilings, anything I have currently that is satellite/GPS based seems to work just fine in it. Worst case I can keep the station in an area between garage doors and swing it out when I am going to have it start working so it is able to charge during jobs like the OP said.

Again, I very much appreciate all the advice and input!

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I’ve scheduled Yarbo to run twice a day or more for the last week or so, once before the wife goes to work and once right before the kids get home off the bus. It’s been doing really good up until the most recent failure.

Something else they might release in the future is a way to go through gates or pet door type doorways, but they have a lot of software to work on first. Think of it as an 80% machine currently

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Hi there, and thank you so much for your interest in Yarbo!

From everything you shared, it’s clear you’ve already developed a strong understanding of how Yarbo works.

As you mentioned, placing the docking station inside the garage can limit full autonomy for now. Because Yarbo cannot acquire a proper GPS signal indoors, it won’t be able to start a work plan automatically—you would need to manually drive it out to an area with good signal before a job can begin.

We completely understand your concerns about weather and theft, and we’ve also been considering more possibilities to make Yarbo flexible enough to meet situations like yours. Features such as improving operation without relying heavily on GPS are ideas we’re exploring, but they are not part of the next release yet.

We truly appreciate your thoughtful questions and your interest in making Yarbo part of your home. If you have more concerns or ideas, please feel free to share—we’re always here and happy to help!

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Hi, Not sure if the future or next M-series can do with minimum GPS signal!

I‘m Richard Yeung living in the Toronto ,Canada area. I do not own a Yarbo machine, yet!

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M Series with lidar should be able to handle loss of GPS or park in a covered area like in a garage. Not sure if this will come to the Y series any time soon or not, but I’m hopeful. Even without lidar, the cameras should be able to handle this with things like VIO and VSLAM (which are supposedly on the road map).

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Hey Richard. Welcome to the board. Nice to see another northerner. I’m a little ways outside of Edmonton myself. You will have to do a test if you go the M route. Maybe the Lidar can find you a hockey team. lol.

Sorry. I had to. :rofl:

Lane

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Hi Richard,

With the LiDAR version of the M Series, it should be able to handle tasks in environments where the GPS signal is not ideal. Based on what you described, the M Series may be a good fit for your needs.

You can visit our official website to find more detailed information about the M Series: Yarbo M Series – Modular Autonomous Yard Robots Built for Every Season And if you’re interested in getting one in the future, you’re also very welcome to join us on Kickstarter: Yarbo M: The Universal Modular Yard Robot. 1 Core. 4 Jobs. by Yarbo — Kickstarter

Let me know if you have any other questions.

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Northeast Ohio. We have harsh winters here and bitter windchills as well. Like my kids cars that has been parking outdoors, they have learned the value of ceramic coating. That was been tested on their 3 yrd old cars. So I did the same for Bianca, so for me shes not garaged. I also had the same concerns and been holding off, until my age creeped up and snowstorm Fern hit. Once I got all the kinks figured out( expect to spend time).It was the best decision I have done due to I single push of play to clear my driveway. You want her to have the best signal. Iam still 6 month old owner. I have yet to figure the mowing part. Good luck on your decision

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I thought I would provide some information to UpNorthGuy about whether to garage or not garage with the docking station. After I gathered the info and prepared a reply I realized the thread was months ago (Dec 2025). My wife said “you know, winter is coming up and someone else may like to know about staging in the garage.” so I decided to share this info. Sorry this reply is long.

I live in northern Montana and also wanted to stage my yarbo in the garage. I received the 2026 core with the two new RTK Pro antennas on flex mounts and the pro antenna on the data center. I put the docking station in the garage. With the rover on 3.13.14 firmware, the GPS signal quality stayed around .100000 even though 31 satellites were visible. I had to use the controller to move the rover outside. I also often would see the map drift warning which I attributed to the bad signal in the garage and would leave it alone. It would clear up outside or sometime I needed to restart the rover.

Then this was interesting. With the firmware updated to 3.13.15, the rover has a much better GPS signal quality. No dock location change, no data center change, no antenna change, only the firmware update.

With firmware 3.13.15, the quality improved to around 0.31999 and the same 31 satellites. A definite improvement but the obstacle avoidance problem showed up. The rover is now on Hotfix firmware V3.14.1 and signal remains the same along with the avoidance problem.

I wondered if the GPS signal was affected by whether the rover was charging or not. So I only turned off charging and checked the signal again. The quality improved to 0.69999 with the 31 satellites. I didn’t expect the charging process to effect the signal that much.
Would the signal now be good enough to keep the dock in the garage? No.

I tried returning the rover from the yard to the dock to recharge using the recharge app button and there it went. It followed the path into the garage and docked successfully starting the charge - WOW, this is great. It did that only once. Other times it would drive into the wall and drift off the path. Just not consistent enough at 0.69999.

The app now always shows the option to enter my yard from inside the garage. Sometimes I can start the plan but it barely follows the path and runs into things (I have ultrasonic sensors off). Other times the app says it cannot proceed because the signal is too weak. Usually the position mapping shows the rover off the dock even though it is centered and charging. This screenshot shows the rover inside the garage wall.

I really wanted the ability to have the dock inside the garage because I have front and back rollup doors. I could send the rover out the back for lawn mowing and out the front for snow blowing all from a single docking station but inside the garage it just does not work.

I have ordered a second dock. Both docks will now be outside and have good signal. One dock in the back for the large back yard and the other front dock for the front lawns and driveway. The front dock with snow blowing will also be partway under the porch eave. the rover will be able to recharge mid job as needed.

I just thought I would share the garage info since I have the 3 new RTK Pro antennas and it seems dock charging on and off apparently effects the signal.

Charging
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Location
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Not Charging
Not Charging1080×2400 147 KB

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The GPS and other components go to “sleep” a bit when it’s actively charging and there’s no app connected. If you leave the app open for 10 mins or longer in an obstructed area, it gives the GPS time to converge a little and get a better signal. The quality is going to be off though inside, as GPS is blocked or reflecting. This can vary with time of day too. I wish they would release the ability to drive straight forward X number of feet so that shelters and garage locations could more readily be used, but they have other priorities to fix (rightfully so).

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But the fix to just drive straight for a certain amount of feet can’t be that hard. It has ultrasonics and vision to get it to safely go straight a few feet and even just stop at that point and wait for a lock on satellites.

The other day I had mine leave the dock that is outside about 6 feet from my house and has pretty good signal, my pathway is perfectly straight off the dock for about 15 and then a left hand turn. This thing left the dock and veered left and smashed a rain gutter spout off where it goes underground. The main screen showed Green 0.00M, but yet it went left. If it yarbo had programmed the few feet straight forward this would have been avoided.

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The ultimate fix is an optional feature that allows Yarbo to drive xx number of feet straight ahead off the dock without GPS lock.

Give us a disclaimer to agree to before allowing the feature to be used. That way it’s our responsibility if Yarbo drives off and bumps into something. I’m fine with that.

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This has been said so many times on here it is sickening, yet yarbo refuses to hear it and act on it!

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Thanks Bryan and the other Commenters.
I thought the core stops “sleeping” quickly when you stop actively charging because generally you stop charging to begin a job. My app was connected the entire time when I switched from charge to end charge. I was also refreshing the diagnostic page. The 0.69999 with the 31 satellites was consistent.

I brought this up because if charging affects the signal, the core on its own may show a good test location for a proposed charging dock, the signal looks good, but when charging is on the signal may actually be less. I thought this may be causing some of the issues with map drift. The rover updates its location but during charging the signal is weaker.

After reading your comment I tried again. I left my app open for a little more than 20 minutes while the core was charging but the level only hovered at about .175 and 29 birds. After the wait I ended the charge and watched again for about 15 minutes and it didn’t jump back up. The level remained at .175 and 29 birds. So I don’t know. This is a fickle thing with a lot of handshaking going on. I am a retired engineer and things like this drive me nuts. Logic is sometimes hard to apply. I have servers, routers, switches, and over 80 devices on my network and Yarbo is frustrating.

So, for me, placement outside and the second dock are good things. The straight X feet option would not work for me in particular because I would want to go 3 feet straight off the dock and then proceed right X feet or left X feet depending on the current plan. (Why do I make my life complicated!) I currently have one physical and two virtual docks.

By the way Bryan, I really appreciate the support you give in this forum. We may not all correspond back to you directly but we definitely read your comments and support replies. You are a real value to the forum. Thank you

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Thank you for your kind words. Yes, sometimes the things these robots do make you scratch your head. And they change with every update. It’s hard to keep it all straight sometimes.