u/PMac10000

Simple questions require simple answers.

I am asking this question because I currently have two lawn robots. The difference between what the two of them believe is a 3-in cutting height, is about 3/4 in.

My lawn tells me that the apps disagree by that much.

Traditional lawn mowers have a obvious way to measure their deck height before they start a lawn job.

How can I get the same data from my lawn robots? Serious question! 🤔

I'm not really sure how it happened, because the mower was performing quite well before this first fully-remote mow. I surmised the cord cutting happened upon return to the base, after a successful area mow completed. The RTK station is only about a meter from the base, but it's cable, and the other cable, were directed behind the base, under a deck, and well out of the mowing area. So the damage I found upon return was quite a surprise.

The RTK cable had been severed twice, and a section of it is still wrapped around one of the robot's cutting disc axles. I tried to extricate it, but so far it's stuck around it pretty hard. As a result, the robot is communicating errors about the blades being stuck.

What are my options here? I realize I can try switching to Network RTK in the long run, but for now I have a broken mower that needs fixing.

There is a clear winner here, as you might guess, but there are few unexpected advantages of the Goat.

The Navimow is the winner in most of the categories you would expect, including agility, build quality, tech, battery performace, slopes, navigation, less tearing, better app... most everything you can imagine.

Evenness, ie thoroughness of cutting all blades to the same height... this is a toss-up in my opinion. Both do a great job!

But there is one category where the Goat beat the Segway. "How do the stripes look"? Oddly, the end result looks way better with the Goat. The spacing, and alternation of light/dark, is more eye-pleasing.

IMO, The Navimow is trying to emulate a landscaper-style stripe pattern, with wider spacing of light-dark bands. But there are tighter-spaced grooves within the bands, and it just doesn't look as good.

This is possibly due to the Navimow being significantly heavier. Not sure yet. And I imagine with Navimow's superior software, there may be other ways to to tell the robot to create better stripes. I'm still learning. 😊

Specifically, after a factory reset. I've read that this is possible, but I don't see how.

After my GOAT A2500 robot is reset to defaults, and the network setup is completed, I'm forced to go through the 3-step wizard for robot setup, RTK setup, satellite detection etc. There are no options to restore a map... in fact, the map management icon is missing altogether. So I'm forced to put the robot in the charging base and to begin mapping anew.

Is this really how it's supposed to work? Am I supposed to start mapping again... maybe to create something temporary, just to get the map management icon back? Then, I suppose I would be able to delete the temporary map and restore the backup? Has this worked for anyone?

EDIT: I confirmed that after making a small temporary map, the map management icon does indeed return. Unfortunately, there is no "restore" option in the map section. So I'm forced to remap my large lawn. WTF Ecovacs?

After getting off to a mostly reliable start to the season, my Goat A2500 RTK lawn robot has deteriorated.

It is now rebooting roughly once every couple of minutes, or even less. This occurs when I'm mowing the lawn, in any mode, or even when it's in the charger. Sometimes the robot recovers and continues mowing the lawn again, but only for another minute or two until the next reboot. Sometimes after rebooting, the robot decides to head back to the charging station, where it continues rebooting.

Needless to say, this is not acceptable. Rest assured I have reset power to the robot, charging station, and RTK station, more times than I can count. In frustration, I have even resorted to factory resetting the robot a couple of times. This seemed to stabilize the situation the first couple times I tried... but the most recent factory reset did nothing to stop the reboots. (Even if the factory reset fixed the problem, it would not be an acceptable solution due to the remapping requirements.)

Unless there is another avenue to try, I have given up on trying to get this robot to work correctly... it seems hopeless. What are the odds that Ecovacs will honor the warranty and replace my unit, which was purchased in June 2025?

The type I bought looks like a couple giant cogs (or sprockets, maybe) attached to the rear wheels of my Goat. These seem to be readily available on eBay and other places, for most lawn robot brands.

I'm hoping to avoid getting stuck in soft soil areas, and also edge obstacles, like low walls, on my lawn perimeter where the robot often spins its wheels.

First, a word of caution. Attaching these to your robot's wheels is no easy task. The provided screws are Torx driven, and unless you have the right tools, you will not be able to do it. The wheels are solid plastic material and very resistant to screw driving. So your manual Torx screwdriver isn't gonna cut it. Ultimately, I had to drill 12 pilot holes with a ~7/32" bit, and I snapped two bits doing this... apparently because the plastic material in the wheels is so resistant.

Once the pilot holes are made, though, it's fairly easy to drive the Torx screws into the wheel manually to attach the anti-skid rings. The jury is still out on whether the "new wheels" are going to save the mower in the usual stuck locations, but it's promising so far. Also, I can see some new perforation tracks in some areas it crosses, which I hope will to provide a little lawn aeration for overseeding in the fall.

Has anyone else added aftermarket Anti Skid Stainless Steel Wheels to their robot? I'd be interested to hear how it worked out.

My lawn has never looked better than right now. Bravo Ecovacs Goat A2500!

Now all I need to do is to ELIMINATE it getting stuck, so that I can rely on remote operation. The mower never gets stuck inside the areas I've defined... it only happens during edge mowing modes. Some areas of the lawn have a very low wall along parts of their perimeter, and sometimes soft soil... the mower often spins its wheels in these areas until it gets stuck. Even worse, one area has a curb with a 6-inch drop... So it can get stuck by falling off if it doesn't navigate correctly.

I have tried to solve these problems by filling in low / soft spots with sand and extra soil to firm things up and level things out along the edge. But the robot still get stuck, in known, and unexpected, spots along the perimeter. It seems like the best fail-safe would be to disable edge mowing altogether in these repeat-offender areas. Or maybe there's a better way by dividing areas on the map, or creating no-entry zones... but that hasn't worked well for me.

What do my fellow robot mower owners recommend in these situations?