Video by BenjaminNelson via YouTube
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Chipping away on building a Remote Control Lawn Mower.
Today, I was working on the mounts and height adjustment. Unfortunately, it looks like the way the original wheel axels are, it doesn’t make it easy to convert to single-point height control. I might be able to disassemble the mower and ROTATE of the of axles to make it match the other. I think that it would then make a good parallelagram and have the height control work right.
But since the deck was at least fairly well connected to the frame, I just used a bungi-cord to hold up the front, so I could do some test mowing.
The grass was very long, as I haven’t yet mowed this year. Also, it rained this morning and the area I was mowing included a big hill – so it was the worst possible conditions. The upside is that bad conditions are good for testing!
One limitation that I’m noticing, and something I would never have thought of until actually testing – is that tank steering limits traction! Tank steering sometimes only drives ONE WHEEL. That’s HALF the usual traction. On a riding lawn mower, the front wheels control the steering, but BOTH rear wheels are always driving the mower!
Overall, it works well. I like the remote "Kill the blades" feature. Already one good use was to turn off the blade when I got the mower stuck near the culvert at the end of my driveway. Because I have the blade control rigged up through a relay controlled from the motor controller board, if the motor battery dies, it kills the blade as well. Unintentional good design!!!
While I was test mowing, a neighbor stopped while out on his electric bicycle. "No way! No way!" was his first thoughts on the project. I showed him what I had done so far, and he loved it.
See all the videos on this project at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmHss3DBZUilzbBMP_pNAJkBlUF43DPHB
