My autonomous lawn mower thread/blog

I have the Navimow I 108 since the end of last year. Upgraded from a Robomow with a boundary wire.

Cant fault the new machine. Easy to setup, easy to adjust boundaries etc, has had a few over the air updates and no issues with those.

Grass looks great. A neighbour said it looked like a snooker table.

On the chat bot. Asked to speak to an agent. Kept telling them it wasn't acceptable. Ended up they said May and nothing they could do about it and offered 3 sets of blades. Fairly annoying alright.

3 sets of blades, is that 3 sets of 24.

Did they indicate a date in May

I picked up the yuka mini 800 version, only got it on Tuesday but very happy with it so far. Took about ten days for delivery but that includes two weekends. Simple to setup and so far so good.

I would be interested to hear about the Kress aswell. It seems great value

Setup my Yuka Mini 600 & set it off on its first cut this afternoon.

What a brilliant machine & so quiet. It's incredibly simple to setup out of box & the auto-map feature worked perfectly. No need to drive the Yuka around the lawn, just tell it where any edge is & off it went.

Perfect straight line cuts with stripes.

Yes, I had that a few years ago, there's a temperature sensor on the battery that goes bad.

There would be some areas that'd be cut high and not so often, others that I'd like to be kept very short (that zone-by-zone flexibility is one of the features that I see and like in the Luba). If it was only changing blades that needed to be done, that'd be okay - wouldn't be any worse than sharpening the blades on the ride-on. My concern would be more major interventions, especially if they required ordering spares and waiting for them to be delivered. And simple errors that "only" require a touch of a button, but that touch needs 600km-long arms!

Luba 2 One Year Review

TL/DR: Love it, highly recommend.

It’s a year since I purchased my Luba 2 and since I found this forum incredibly helpful when I was evaluating my options, I thought I would post a one year review. I won’t go into the purchasing decision as I have already posted about that.

Objective

My objective was to replace my ride-on mower and rely solely an autonomous robot.

My Gardening Profile

Hovering slightly above the world’s worse category. I’m happy to think I’m brilliant if the grass is cut. When I cut the hedge I feel I should be on the front page of The Irish Garden. (I had to look that up!)

Tech: I’m very comfortable with tech but dislike tech that is for the sake of tech. For example, having to use an app when low tech buttons and dials would be far more convenient.

Key Concerns

Would it work.

As in, would the ‘high-tech’ (satellite controlled) live up to the promise or would it be a frustrating piece of tech?

Can it handle areas where there is no line of sight to the RTK. i.e. the house in the way (I could not find an answer to this prior to purchase so it was a key concern)?

Would it prove to be convenient?

Would I be able to rely on it entirely.

Would the west of Ireland weather mean that I can’t get the grass cut as frequently as this requires?

How would it manage in Autum when the leaves fall?

Would I have to get a contractor in to do a start of season cut? I really wanted to be able to avoid a situation of the grass getting long over the winter and then having a mountain of grass to deal with on the first cut.

Outcomes

Would it work: It’s excellent.

I’m not the type of person who loves having the latest tech. I’m far more likely to go for a lower tech proven simpler solution than a high tech promise. However, I didn’t want to have to install perimeter wires and I was drawing in by the various features. Thus, I made the leap to the high tech option. Once I got familiar with the app and update all the firmware (top tip – do this out of the box) I was good to go. I had my entire site, three zones with ~20 no go areas, mapped in under two hours. Since then I’ve made some minor changes such as adding or deleting a no-go zone. This is very easy to do.

Can it handle areas that have no line of sight back to the RTK? Yes, absolutely no problem.

Is it convenient? Yes, absolutely. It has definitely freed up a lot of time and the grass always looks great. In the peak growing period, I try to get the grass cut every second day or so and that means a bit of thinking about when to send it out. However, I don’t have that dreaded sense of ‘I better get the grass cut when I get home from work’ and having to spend a good chunk of my evening doing so.

Can I rely on it entirely? Yes.

Weather was a concern for sure. As readers of this forum will know, it is not unusual for it to rain for days here in the west. No doubt it is best to cut the grass when it is dry. Despite being in the west, I can get it cut dry more often than you might think, but realistically some wet cuts are required otherwise the grass would get too long. I have not found this to be problematic so long as the grass is short.

Autumn leaves – well they have to be raked up. They always did, so nothing really new here other than having to do so with a bit more dedication and frequency than I would have done when I had the ride-on. However, this is so much better for the lawn.

Did I need a first cut? No. With the ride-on I would have done an occasional winter cut to avoid having overgrown grass in spring. With Luba, I did 2 cuts in November, 1 in each of December, January and February and 2 in March. That meant the grass never got too high, it looked great (all year) and I didn’t have a mountain of grass to deal with.

Other observations

I’m incredibly impressed with the location accuracy. I will probably edit or remap my main lawn simply because I know I can get it to go closer to the edge or objects than I had allowed for in the first mapping.

Strimming: I’ve always had to do some strimming and that is also true with this, but for convenience I bought smaller and lighter battery strimmer. That has worked out really well.

Scheduling: Interestingly, I don’t really use the scheduling function all that much. This is mainly down to our very changeable weather. I had a schedule for every second day but I found that I was cancelling sessions due to rain or the grass being too wet. Or I had cut it the day before because it had been dry. Thus, just sending it out as and when I see fit has worked out just fine.

No mess: One thing about the ride-on was moving it to and from the shed and from the back to the front of the house, typically left significant trails of grass cuttings that were unsightly and time consuming to clean up. I no longer have that problem.

Maintenance: This is a doddle. Especially in comparison to the ride-on. All that is really required is to keep the underside clear and the blades moving freely. More wet cuts will require more cleaning, but it’s an easy job. As is changing the blades. Even a deep clean of removing the discs etc is easy.

Finally, an additional benefit is that since I no longer have a ride-on, I freed up a lot of space in my shed. Now I have a nice little workshop area instead.

I hope that is of use to someone.

I'm not bothered by the amount time needed to set things up and map out the zones if it's a once-off thing. What I'm concerned about is the risk of finding that I still need to take the mower and/or strimmer out when I get home because it got the hump about something while I was away and just didn't do the job (see leaves/branches query in post above) … aswell as whatever servicing the machine itself needed. (Same country, by the way - just 600km away! )

Servicing is just cleaning the deck and changing the blades as necessary. 6-8 weeks would not be an issue unless you were cutting longer wet grass pretty consistently.

It could work flawlessly for an extended period but equally you could be unlucky and encounter a situation where it will end up stopping and going to sleep and require someone to push its buttons. But other than paying someone to come in and cut your grass while you are away, then I don't think there is any solution that can guarantee that it will work without intervention for an extended period.

I've not left mine for time so I can't really comment further.

I wouldn't say it's non existent but it's under a lot of pressure at the moment as they are onboarding a lot of new customers.

If you think you will possibly need rely on support for set up then purchasing from a dealer is a better option. They'll guide you through the process and if they stock other brands might be able to suggest something else that suits better.

Lyster Lawnmowers Athlone are the importers for Luba. Coughlans sell them as well. I've read and heard only good thing about both of those, both in-person and online.

Picked up a secondary robot for a smaller back yard today from Aldi. Seems a nice little machine, but very light and not able for much hardship.

Hope someone might be able to help. The wiring is suggested to be installed 30cm from the cutting boundary. But after running all day, the mower is stopping exactly at the wire and not extending out the 30cm to the edge of the grass.
does anyone know if there is a setting to change this? I tried in the app settings for an overhang or over cut setting, but can’t seem to locate it.
appreciate any help.

I followed a YouTuber's referral link this evening, just out of interest, and the order page indicated that units paid for now would be sent "from mid-June" …

50€ of a discount off a 2600€ machine is kinda miserly, though. Between that and the delivery delay, I wouldn't be slow to look for a competitor's model if I was in a hurry.