mowZILLA
Summary:
this is a software and hardware project to "smart UP" a robomower without using hardwired connections to the robomowers board, sensors or actuators. Just read information from LEDs and Sound / Bussers to log the condition of the robomower and notify the owner about status changes and actions to be carried out.
what it is not:
a way to control or change parameters of the robomower
Robomower hardware
Yardforce 600 ECO this robomower has no bluetooth, wifi or any other connection to tell it's current state, e.g.:
- Mowing
- Charging
- Lifted/tilted
- ERROR
- Low battery
In fact, all of this above mentioned states are indicated via LEDs at the cockpit and some of them are followed by a dedicated sound/beep pattern.
here the link to the user manual: https://www.yardforce-tools.com/ProductFiles/fa4b8085-5971-479d-b8ae-45d6835b5a5c.pdf
Cockpit
overview of the buttons and indicator LEDs
The cockpit is devided into 5 zones / funtional areas
- Zone 1: LED indicators for the machine status
- Zone 2: Working time setting area
- Zone 3: Signal setting
- Zone 4: Locking button
- Zone 5: Home & Start button.
Focus area is zone 1 with it's indicator LEDs
this LEDs indicate the following status
- Tilt - Your mower has been lifted during use for some reason
- Signal - The mower cannot receive the signal sent from the boundary wire
- Battery - Battery voltage is too low to perform normal mowing
- Charge - In the process of charging
Environment:
wifi is available for about 50% in the area of our lawn/yard mowZILLA hardware has to be low power and powerd by battery, since it wont be connected to the robomower's battery or charging station
Idea:
Sensing:
use photo electric resistors (sensors) to interpret the LED output lights of the robomowers cockpit use microphone (sensor) to interpret the indications of the sound/beep patterns.
Logging:
log all the events on a device
Connections:
connect to local wifi if available during the different cylces of the robomower
Condition Monitoring Information:
some basic calculations based on status changes, durations, tima of day, or other environmental data / information. These information should then be posted in notifications to the end user to take emidiate actions if necessarry or for the purpose of analysis and further optimization.
Notifications:
send messages to a recepient
- via email
- via whatsapp
- other existing message services that can be looked up on any mobile device (android / apple)
Notifications should include:
- Date & Time
- Category
- Normal, Warning, ERROR
- Change of status; from OLD to NEW
- Actionable information
- suggestions of actions to be carried out, e.g.: