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:
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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
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!
