Crossposted with permission:

Don't Map the Maximum Possible Yard - Nick Carter primer

TL;DR: When mapping your yard, the instinct is to trace every boundary as close to the edge as possible. Don't. The map you create on a perfect afternoon has to work on every session, in every condition, forever. One mistake can mean the end of your mower or your fancy landscaping. Leave margin near anything dangerous, keep channels wider than the mower needs to physically fit, size no-go zones larger than the objects they protect, and treat your first map as a draft. The goal is not the biggest possible map. It’s the most repeatable one.

____________________________________________________

One of the most common mapping mistakes with RTK mowers is trying to map the maximum possible yard instead of the reliable operating area. Those aren’t the same thing. The mower may physically fit along a fence, beside a ditch, around a pond, under a tree line, or through a narrow side yard, but that doesn’t mean it should be mapped there as a normal mowing boundary. A good map is not a property survey. It’s an operating envelope the mower can execute safely and repeatedly under real mowing conditions.

During mapping, owners tend to walk the mower exactly where they want the cut edge to be. That seems reasonable, but it assumes the mower will always drive that same line with the same heading, traction, RTK quality, satellite geometry, and recovery behavior. In practice, mowing is different from mapping. During mowing, the mower is turning, correcting its heading, reacting to grass resistance, dealing with slope and track slip, avoiding obstacles, and sometimes recovering from momentary positioning changes. A boundary that looked fine during a careful mapping walk can become too tight during actual operation.

The map is also not a one-time snapshot. It’s a geometric model the mower tries to match against its positioning on every session, in every condition, indefinitely. Think of it like parallel parking. You can squeeze into a spot that is technically just big enough, but only if everything goes right: the angle, the speed, the steering correction, and the distance from the curb. Do it once on a quiet Sunday and it feels fine.

Do it every day in traffic, in rain, with cars honking behind you, and eventually you clip a bumper. The spot wasn't actually big enough for real-world use under all conditions. It was only big enough for ideal conditions.

A mower boundary works the same way. The boundary you walked on a clear afternoon in spring with strong satellite geometry and ideal conditions has to work on a midsummer morning after the canopy fills in, when multipath increases near the fence line, when the mower drops into a temporary Float fix, when the grass is wet and the tracks slip on a slight slope.

Those are the conditions that determine whether your map was actually big enough. Map with extra room and it doesn't matter if one session is harder than another. Map to the absolute physical limit and sooner or later a bad day puts the mower on the wrong side of it.

This matters most near things the mower cannot safely contact or cross. Fences, walls, rocks, landscape edging, drop-offs, roads, water, patios, pool areas, and steep banks all need margin. Trees and buildings need margin too, not because the mower cannot physically drive there, but because those are exactly the places where RTK quality and heading stability are most likely to degrade.

I recently had a unit go out of bounds near a pond when the LoRa signal was blocked by a parked car. The diagnostic screen looked fine afterward, but that wasn’t the real lesson. The real lesson was that had I mapped the boundary too close to the edge of the pond, it would have been a bad outcome.

However, my boundary with several extra feet of margin on the water side made the outcome harmless regardless of what the positioning was doing at that moment. Clear the error. Push “Resume”. Life goes on. A flood levee one inch below flooding level is not a safe levee. The margin is what protects you.

And don’t expect VSLAM to save a bad boundary. Vision/VSLAM can give the mower local visual awareness, but it’s not a substitute for a well-placed zone. It may help the mower understand its immediate surroundings, recognize certain obstacles, or maintain better local behavior, but the stored map is still the operating plan.

If you map too close to a swimming pool, pond, ditch, road, wall, or drop-off, don’t assume the vision system will recognize the danger early enough, interpret it correctly, and override the path every time. That matters because vision has limits. Low light, dusk, shadows, glare, dirty lenses, wet grass, repetitive open turf, tall grass, and poor visual contrast can all reduce how useful the camera-based system is.

VSLAM is helpful, but it is not a license to draw aggressive boundaries near places where the mower has no room to be wrong. Map the boundary as though the mower needs to be safe on the map alone, then treat VSLAM as an additional safety layer, not the thing that makes a risky map acceptable.

Channels deserve the same thinking. A channel the mower can barely thread physically is not a channel it can navigate reliably. Imagine trying to drive a full-size truck through a parking garage with tight turns built for compact cars. You could probably do it once, slowly, with someone spotting you. You can’t do it every day, in every lighting condition, with someone in the passenger seat blocking your view out the side window, at normal speed, without eventually hitting something.

A channel should be treated like a road, not a tightrope. The mower needs room for heading correction, track slip on wet grass, obstacle response, and the occasional moment where positioning is a little soft and it comes through slightly off-center. If the only way the mower can pass is by being perfect every time, the channel is too narrow or in the wrong place.

No-go zones follow the same logic. A no-go zone is not a physical wall. It’s a software boundary around a real object, and the mower still has a body, tracks, blade deck, turning radius, and positioning uncertainty.

Tracing a no-go zone right to the edge of a pond or fire pit is like building a road with no shoulder and no guardrail. It may work while everything is perfect, but it gives your car no room to recover when conditions aren’t perfect. Don't trace a row full of fancy flowers, a fire pit, a pond edge, a pool, or a rock border as tightly as possible. Give the object enough margin that the mower can make normal corrections without clipping it or repeatedly fighting the boundary.

Tree lines are also worth a specific note. Owners often use them as natural precision boundaries because the line is obvious. The problem is that tree lines create some of the worst possible conditions for navigating near a tight boundary. Canopy changes satellite geometry between seasons. Wet leaves scatter signal differently than dry ones.

A tree line boundary in spring is like a road that gets narrower every week through summer without anyone telling you. A boundary that tracks cleanly in late winter when the trees are bare can produce regular out-of-bounds events in midsummer when the canopy is full. If you include tree-line edges in your map at all, pull the boundary well inside the tree line rather than tracing right up to the edge of the canopy.

The better approach is to make the first map conservative. Map the areas where the mower can mow reliably, not every inch you hope it might reach. Watch several mowing sessions before tightening edges or adding more complicated sections. If the mower consistently handles an area with clean positioning, clean turns, and no recovery behavior, you can refine the map later. If it hesitates, waggles, drifts, loses RTK quality, or fights for traction, don't ignore that and just map closer to the edge.

The practical test for any boundary is simple. Ask yourself what happens if the mower thinks it’s a foot further inside the map than it actually is. If the answer is “nothing”, the boundary is in the right place. If the answer is the mower hits the fence, drops off the edge, goes into the water, or drives into the road, pull it in until the answer becomes “nothing”.

The goal is not the biggest possible map. It’s the most repeatable map. Leave safe margin where the consequences are high, keep channels generous, avoid precision boundaries in marginal RTK areas, and treat the first map as a draft rather than a final product. An RTK mower does its best work when the map gives it room to be a real mower operating in a real yard, not a survey instrument tracing a perfect property line.

Crossposted with permission:

Extra uses for Split and Merge

One of the things I've been playing around with in the beta software is using the new Zone Split and Merge functions in ways they weren't necessarily intended.

The app still doesn't have a true 'Draw an Area' function where you can just define a custom zone to mow on demand. But I've found a workable workaround using Split and Merge together. Now that it's been officially released, I thought I'd let others know about it.

Here's how it works:

If you want to mow just a specific portion of a larger zone, use Zone Split to divide the existing zone around the area you want to target. The Split function creates straight boundary lines, which is actually useful here. Mow the newly created zone that covers your target area. When you're done, use Zone Merge to combine the split zones back into the original single zone.

It's inelegant and takes a few extra steps, but it effectively lets you target a specific portion of a zone for a dedicated mow pass without permanently changing your map.

The Split function has a second useful application on its own: because it produces straight boundary lines, you can use Zone Split followed by Zone Delete to create clean straight edges on zone boundaries. The current boundary mapping with the mower produces organic traced lines, but a split gives you a ruler-straight edge. If you need a precise straight boundary somewhere in your map, splitting and deleting the unwanted portion is currently the cleanest way to achieve it.

Neither of these is an official feature or intended workflow. They're just things I've discovered by poking around with the new tools during the beta period. Use them carefully and back up your map first.

Unofficial Handbook update

The latest Setup, Maintenance, Troubleshooting and Hints handbook condenses a year of great info from this and other Lymow forums - almost totally UNofficial.

Additions for v3.1 include:

* Half-a-dozen new in-depth Nick Carter Primers, with public Reddit links (see Appendix One)

* Workarounds for Plus blade-stop issue

* Video links for Plus mowing deck disassembly, cleaning, and bearing replacement

* More Very Interesting and Useful user projects

* many additions to the Lymow Error code list (Appendix Two)

...and much more besides.

Use the handbook freely. It can be found at either of:

https://files.catbox.moe/hzib2g.pdf

and https://drive.proton.me/urls/SG0YXQFPKC#D6TTvKZygKkr

Please recommend it to others to save time!

Every day is mowing day, except when it isn't

Reposted from FB with permission:

Nick Carter Primer: Charging troubleshooting checklist

Before posting “my mower won’t charge,” please run through the checklist below and say exactly what you checked. “Won’t charge” can mean dirty contacts, poor dock pressure, moisture, cold battery, bad dock placement, a BMS protection state, a charger issue, a dock board issue, or a mower-side wiring issue.

Safety first. Disconnect the battery before cleaning, opening covers, checking wiring, or doing anything near the blades. Don’t jump the battery. Don’t feed power into random pins. Don’t bypass safety sensors unless Lymow specifically tells you to.

Both Models (One and Plus)

1. Check the basic power supply.

Confirm the wall outlet works. Check the GFCI. Check the extension cord. Check the charger brick light (is it lit?). Check that all power connectors are fully seated. Remove any smart plug temporarily unless you are using it only to monitor power draw.

2. Clean the charging contacts.

Clean the mower contacts. Clean the dock contacts. Wipe them even if they look clean. Dry them completely. Lightly buff with steel wool or a brass brush if needed. Wipe with isopropyl if there is grass film or residue.

3. Check the dock surface.

The dock should be firm. It should be flat or slightly sloped toward the QR code. It should not flex. It should not sit in water, soft mud, wet grass, or loose gravel. It should not move when the mower pushes into it.

4. Check for moisture.

Dry the dock. Dry the contacts. Dry the mower contact area. Dry the moisture/rain sensor area. Check for dew, condensation, water under the dock, wet debris, or grass film. Cold temps and excessive moisture can cause the BMS to stop or refuse charging.

5. Do a real reset.

Cancel any task. Power off the mower. Disconnect the battery. Wait 15-30 minutes. Reconnect the battery firmly. Power the mower back on. Let it fully boot before testing again.

6. Check the battery connector.

Remove the rear cover. Confirm the battery connector is fully seated and locked. Check for dirt, moisture, bent pins, loose fit, or a partially backed-out connector. If you have another compatible battery, test with it.

7. Let the mower dock itself.

If you manually docked it, don’t trust that. Drive it a short distance away. Cancel the task. Command it to dock. Even if it docked itself, try to have it mow and then dock again. For Plus, tap or briefly hold “+” a few seconds if the deck needs to come up for better contact. For One, tap or briefly hold “-” if needed to lower the deck while docked.

8. Press the dock contacts.

For Plus, press the two dock contact plates by hand and see whether charging starts. Shift the mower around a bit to ensure good contact. For One, press the spring-loaded dock pads and make sure they move freely and spring back. Press down on the mower and wiggle around a bit to ensure good contact. If pressing contacts changes the charging state, suspect contact pressure, dock posture, dirty contacts, weak springs, brush interference, or dock alignment.

9. Check dock lights.

The dock light switch only controls the lights. It does not turn charging on or off. For One, step-style lighting usually means charging. Flowing light usually means not properly docked. Center flashing can mean charging error. For Plus, step-light effect means charging. Flowing light means not properly docked. Center light on with sides off means standby. Other flashing patterns can indicate charging errors, overcurrent, overvoltage, or rainwater issues.

10. Check the charger brick light.

On the charger, red means active charging. Green generally means standby, full, or not actively charging. If the mower battery is low and the brick stays green, charging probably is not starting. Listen for a “click” when charging starts.

11. If you get “Charging Not Detected.”

Check dock power. Clean contacts. Dry contacts. Check moisture sensor area. Press the dock contacts by hand. Restart the mower. Power cycle the dock/charger. Let the mower dock itself.

12. If you get “Charging Station Tag Not Detected.”

Clean the mower camera lenses. Clean the dock QR/tag. Check glare, shadows, cobwebs, and low light. Check whether the dock moved. Re-add or adjust the charging station location in the app if needed.

13. If you get “Charging Interrupted” or “Unexpectedly stopped charging.”

Check whether the battery actually dropped. If it still reaches 98-100%, it may be a brief interruption or nuisance notification. If it drops to 70-85%, treat it as real. Check cold temps. Check excessive moisture. Check condensation. Check contact pressure. Check dock stability. Check charger brick light. Check power draw if using a smart plug. Press the STOP button twice to attempt to revert a constantly-discharging mower back to charging.

14. If you get E9 or ERROR_SOC_COMM_LOST.

This is not simply “low battery”. SoC means state of charge, but this error means the mower lost communication with the battery/BMS state-of-charge reporting. Reseat the battery connector. Check pins. Deep power cycle. Swap battery if possible. If it follows the battery, suspect battery/BMS. If it stays with the mower, suspect mower-side wiring/control electronics.

Plus specific checks

(for original One, skip to 22)

15. Check Plus contact plate movement.

Make sure the top charging contacts on the mower are clean. Make sure the dock contact plates are clean. Press both dock contact plates by hand. Make sure they move freely and spring back.

16. Check Plus docking posture.

Make sure the mower is seated squarely. Make sure the deck/omniwheel posture is correct. Tap “+” once or twice (or briefly hold if necessary) if manually docking. Drive away and command Dock instead of manually placing it.

17. Check Plus front wheel/omniwheel position.

Check whether the front wheels/omni wheels are touching correctly. If the mower only charges when you press it down, forward, or lift it up, suspect contact pressure, deck posture, or dock alignment.

18. Check Plus dock brushes and tower area.

Check whether dock brushes are too stiff or preventing full contact. Temporarily remove them only as a test. Check the Plus dock tower area for moisture. The Plus moisture sensor arrangement is not the same as the early One docks.

19. Check Plus charger and LEDs.

Check the charger brick light. Red means active charging. Green means standby, full, or not actively charging. Eliminate power supply cable extension and plug directly into dock pigtail. Eliminate any surge protectors, power monitors or other items and plug directly into the outlet.

20. Check Plus dock voltage.

Measure dock output at the charging contacts if you are comfortable with a multimeter. With the mower off the dock, the Plus dock pads should show about 1.5-1.8V standby/handshake voltage. When the mower is properly docked and charging is active, you should expect high-30V output, roughly around 38V. If it never rises into the high-30V range while the mower is actually trying to charge, or if it drops out under load, suspect the dock, charger, contact pressure, moisture sensor, or dock mainboard. A good connection shows almost no voltage drop while charging. Check voltage coming out of power supply by disconnecting and testing voltage across two larger pins. Voltage should be roughly around 38V.

https://lymowtechsupport.zendesk.com/.../sppZ7inPksHO.../...

21. Check Plus mower-side charging-port voltage only if you know where to measure.

Remove the battery and measure charging-port voltage at the mower battery connector only if you know exactly where to measure (C+ and C-). About 1.5-1.8V there suggests the charging circuit path is present. 0V may indicate open mower wiring. Other unexpected values may point back to the dock mainboard or charging circuit fault. Do not short pins. Do not guess.

Original One specific checks

22. Check One dock pads.

Clean the underside mower charging contacts. Clean the dock spring-loaded charging pads. Make sure both dock arms move freely. Make sure both dock pads spring back. Make sure the mower is pushed firmly into the dock.

23. Check One charger and LEDs.

Check the charger brick light. Red usually means active charging. Green usually means standby, full, or not actively charging. Check dock LEDs. Step-style lighting usually means charging. Flowing light usually means not properly docked. Center flashing can mean charging error. Both sides flashing means moisture issue.

24. Check One moisture sensor area.

Check the dock moisture sensor area. On early One docks with exposed moisture sensor nubs, tape over the sensors when false moisture detection stopped charging. Later One docks have a plastic cage around the sensor area. Clean and dry first. Check drainage.

25. Check One deck position and brake state.

Press Stop twice if it appears stuck in a weird brake/discharge state. Tap (or briefly hold if necessary) “-” if needed to lower the deck before docking or if on the dock but deck is not low enough.

26. Check One 10A charger setup.

If using a 10A charger, make sure you are using the correct 10A extension cables. Do not use old 2.5A extension cables with the 10A charger. If charging is slow, intermittent, or stopped after using the 10A charger, inspect for heat or connector issues. Eliminate power supply cable extension and plug directly into dock pigtail. Eliminate any surge protectors, power monitors or other items and plug directly into the outlet.

27. Check One dock voltage.

Measure voltage across the One dock spring-loaded charging pads. On the original One dock, you should generally see high-30V output, roughly around 38V, when the charger/dock output is active. If the charger brick is red but you measure low voltage or 0V at the dock pads, suspect a dock/contact/wiring problem. If you see high-30V with no load but it drops when the pads are pressed or when the mower tries to charge, suspect a bad internal dock connection, loose spade connector, burnt terminal, bad internal mower connector, weak contact, or dock board issue. Check under shrink wrap. Voltage alone does not prove the dock is good. It has to hold voltage under load. A good connection shows almost no voltage drop while charging. Check voltage coming out of power supply by disconnecting and testing voltage across two larger pins. Voltage should be roughly around 38V.

https://lymowtechsupport.zendesk.com/.../sppZ7inPksHO.../...

28. Check One internal dock connections if comfortable.

If voltage exists but collapses under load, suspect internal dock connection, contact resistance, or dock board issue. If comfortable, inspect the internal dock spade connectors. Look for burnt plastic, discoloration, loose crimps, loose spades, or corrosion. Check under shrink wrap.

29. Check One continuity from the internal connector.

Check continuity from the internal yellow connector to each spring-loaded charging arm. A connector can look fine and still have no continuity. Check under shrink wrap. If you find burnt terminals or no continuity, stop treating it as normal maintenance and contact Lymow for replacement.

Both Models (One and Plus):

Low or dead battery checks

30. If the battery fully discharged recently.

Disconnect it completely for a couple of hours. Reconnect and try the official dock/charger again. Do not jump-start it. Do not use an improvised charger. If it sat dead for a long time and will not wake on the official charger after an hour or more, contact Lymow.

31. If the mower will not power on.

Try a known-good compatible battery if available. If the mower will not power on at all with a known-good battery, suspect mower-side electronics or wiring. If the LCD backlight comes on but there is no display, no fans, no LEDs, and no button response, that is not a normal dirty-contact problem. If you have an external direct cable connector, charge the battery with that and then replace in mower. If it doesn’t power on, either the battery is bad or the mower power on path is bad. If it does power on, suspect the dock/mower charging path/interface.

Temperature/BMS checks

32. Check battery temperature.

If the battery is cold, bring it inside and let it warm up. If the battery is hot from mowing or sun, let it cool. Cold temps can stop charging. Excessive moisture can also stop charging.

33. Check for BMS protection after errors.

If charging stops around 20-30% after blade jams, internal errors, abrupt shutdown, or moisture exposure, power down and let everything dry/rest. If it keeps happening after normal temperature and dry conditions return, report it.

Useful swap tests

34. Test with another mower, dock, or battery if available.

Try the suspect mower on a known-good dock. Try a known-good mower on the suspect dock. Try a known-good battery in the suspect mower. Try the suspect battery in a known-good mower. Try a direct charge with cable adapter if you have one. Report which result changes the problem.

When to stop and open a ticket

35. Stop if there are signs of electrical damage.

Stop if you find burnt connectors, melted plastic, scorched wiring, repeated voltage collapse, or water inside electronics.

36. Stop if the fault points mower-side.

Stop if the battery will not wake, E9 keeps returning, a known-good battery does not power the mower, or the LCD backlight comes on with no display, no fans, no LEDs, and no button response.

37. Stop if you are not comfortable testing.

Stop if you are not comfortable with a multimeter. Stop if you do not know exactly which pins to test. Don’t guess.

What to send Lymow

38. Send the useful details.

Include model, firmware version, charger type, mower serial number, exact error message, dock LED pattern, charger brick light color, battery percentage before and after, and whether it happened after rain, cold, cleaning, firmware update, moving dock, or dead battery.

39. Send the useful evidence.

Tell them whether contacts were cleaned, whether you pressed the contacts by hand, whether you tried commanded docking, whether you did a battery disconnect reset and for how long, voltage readings if measured, whether another mower charges on this dock, and whether this battery works in another mower. Say whether the voltage was measured off-dock, docked, actively charging, or under load. ­­­­­­­­­Send photos and video. Upload logs.

Best support wording:

“Here’s what I see. Here’s what I checked. Here’s what I measured. Here’s what changed. I uploaded logs. Here are photos and videos.”

Reposted from FB with permission:

Nick Carter Primer - a Real World Navigation Example

Instead of another straight primer today, I figured I’d use a real-world example. Understanding how these mowers work is useful, but the real learning usually happens when you connect that information to what the mower is actually doing in the yard. This is one of those cases where the behavior looks wrong at first glance, but starts to make sense once you understand the setting behind it. I want to use this as a real field example because it shows something that can look like the mower has completely lost its mind when it really hasn’t.

Several people have posted recently about this exact behavior, thinking there’s something wrong with their mower, which is why I wanted to present this as a case study. In my photos below, you can see the result of this behavior. Some areas are cut cleanly, while other taller patches are still standing.

https://preview.redd.it/d3iuf5uvn4ah1.jpg?width=577&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ec9f0b9faaa48850882b0606faefaee1f35d009a

In the video (linked at the end for those with FB), it looks even worse. The mower moves forward, stops, backs up, turns, circles around, spins, tries a different direction, then does the same kind of thing again. If you don’t know what setting it’s using, it’s pretty easy to think the mower is malfunctioning and completely broken.

But in this case, it isn’t lost. It’s doing exactly what it’s been told to do.

The mower is set to Smart obstacle mode. That means it’s using the cameras and onboard detection logic to look for obstacles in the mowing zone before touching them. That’s different from Touch mode, where the mower is allowed to keep moving until it physically bumps into something. In Smart mode, the mower is trying to avoid trouble ahead of time. That’s useful in the right conditions, but it can also create this kind of behavior when the grass and weeds are uneven.

The problem here is the mix of shorter cut grass with taller patches scattered throughout the area. To us, that’s obviously just grass and weeds that need to be knocked down. To the mower, some of those taller patches can look like something standing in its path. It doesn’t have a person’s judgment.

It’s not looking at a patch of seed heads or flowers and saying, “That’s just tall grass, keep going.” It has cameras, software, and limited sensor information trying to decide whether what’s in front of it is safe to drive through.

That’s much harder than people think. A patch of tall weeds, a small post, a child’s toy, a garden tool, a hose, or ornamental grass can all create a similar problem for a vision system. The mower has to make that decision while it’s moving (quite quickly mind you), vibrating, turning, and dealing with shadows, glare, uneven ground, and wind moving the grass around, all from the perspective of something less than a foot off the ground.

It doesn’t have the same top-down perspective or overall view that we have as a human towering over the lawn. With tall grass, its vision is limited and it has to make these types of decisions in a split second with a wall of tall weeds and short grass flying at its cameras in a constant blur of vegetation and anything else in its path. It’s like standing in the middle of a busy highway as cars and trucks come flying at you head on, all at 70 miles an hour.

Slowing the mower down can help because it gives the cameras and software a little more time to process what’s coming, but it doesn’t completely solve the problem because the mower is still trying to interpret a messy, moving wall of vegetation from a very low angle.

There’s AI involved, but AI doesn’t magically understand your yard the way you do. Sometimes it gets the distinction right. Sometimes it gets conservative and treats cuttable growth like an obstacle. And that’s what’s happening in the video. The mower approaches taller growth, decides it may be an obstacle, backs away, and tries to go around it.

Then it runs into another taller patch and repeats the same process. From the outside, it looks confused. In reality, it’s just running its obstacle avoidance logic over and over again. It isn’t failing because the drive system is bad. It isn’t necessarily an RTK problem. It isn’t a broken map. It’s the mower seeing tall, messy growth and deciding, based on the selected obstacle mode, that it shouldn’t keep pushing forward.

That’s how you get the patchy result in the photos. If you weren’t watching the mower during the mow and observing its strange behavior, you’d come back and see the poor results and think that the mower is broken or is a complete waste of money. The mower cuts the areas it accepts as clear and avoids the areas it thinks may be blocked.

The pattern looks random because those decisions are happening in real time from different approach angles. It may get closer to a clump from one direction and turn away sooner from another. It can make the mower look dumb, even though the behavior actually makes sense once you understand what setting is driving it.

Switching to Touch mode changes the whole thing. In Touch mode, the mower isn’t trying as hard to visually avoid those taller weeds before it reaches them. It’s allowed to keep moving unless it physically hits something. In this type of area, that can be the difference between a mower wandering around like a drunken sailor and a mower that simply pushes through and cuts the grass. If there isn’t an actual hard object in the way, Touch mode lets it do the work.

That doesn’t mean Touch mode is always the right answer. I wouldn’t use it blindly in an area with toys, hoses, rocks, stakes, shallow landscape lights, drop-offs, small trees, irrigation parts, or anything fragile. If there’s something out there you don’t want the mower to hit, Smart mode may still be the safer choice. The point is that the setting needs to match the job. Smart mode is for caution. Touch mode is for situations where you know the area is clear and you want the mower to push through growth that the cameras may misread.

For a first cleanup pass, spring flush growth, rougher sections, or weedy areas like this, I’d walk the area first and make sure there’s nothing hidden that the mower shouldn’t hit. Then I’d raise the deck, slow the mower down if needed, use a higher blade speed, and consider Touch mode until the tall stuff is knocked down. Once the area is back under control, Smart mode may work much better again because the mower isn’t staring at a bunch of taller stems and seed heads sticking up all over the place.

This is also why maintenance mode matters. Robot mowers generally do their best work when they’re maintaining grass, not reclaiming a section that’s gotten ahead of them. Lymow can handle more than a little razor-blade automower, but it still has to operate within its sensor logic.Tall weeds scattered through shorter grass create a weird middle ground. It’s not always thick enough to be treated like a field, but it’s visually messy enough to confuse obstacle detection.

Lymow still has work to do here. I’m not pretending the detection logic is perfect. Better software should eventually get better at telling the difference between tall grass and a real obstacle. But this isn’t as easy as people assume.

Outdoor vision is messy. Grass moves. Shadows change. Seed heads stick up. Stems look solid from some angles and disappear from others. A clump that looks harmless to us can look like a real object to a mower trying not to run into things.

The useful takeaway is that strange behavior doesn’t always mean the mower is broken. Sometimes the map is fine. The RTK is fine. The tracks, blades, and motors are fine. The mower is just operating under a setting that doesn’t match the current condition of the lawn. Before assuming the whole system is garbage, it’s worth asking what mode it’s in and what the mower thinks it’s seeing. Walk a mile in its shoes, so to speak.

In this example, one setting makes the mower look useless, and another setting lets it do the job. Smart mode makes it cautious enough to avoid cuttable weeds. Touch mode lets it push through and cut cleanly. Once the higher patches are knocked down, you can switch back to Smart mode if you want the extra obstacle caution during normal mowing.

These mowers aren’t magic, and they’re not human. They’re systems. Once you understand what the system is trying to do, a lot of the “stupid” behavior starts to make more sense. Sometimes the fix isn’t a support ticket, a remap, or another complaint about firmware. Sometimes it’s one setting that changes the mower from looking completely confused to doing exactly what you bought it to do.

Video for FB denizens:

https://www.facebook.com/100002034471711/videos/pcb.4767037653507658/1659296161688557?__cft__[0]=AZbD00lYhVhZQ0e_BSZregLIig5uEOkzT6LejunfMCl-BfpE40tkcj-7qtWEKYgJ8CeuRvzY0Vc5zXyN6IICAxB0FKnDNL8-R0LP4HAqyB2Xzqh3vKdTpk0CWMtGQKu2_qHGvJQ2sB-LzKMaI5k742Bw&__tn__=*b0H-R

Reposted from FB with permission:

Nick Carter Primer: The App Screen Is Not Always the Mower’s Reality

(TL;DR: The Lymow app shows you what the mower last reported, not necessarily what it's doing right now. "Offline," "Charging," and "Fixed" are labels, not guarantees. The mower is making its own decisions onboard, and the app sometimes lags, simplifies, or just gets it wrong. When something weird happens, watch the mower, check the physical indicators, and describe the sequence. Don't stop at the app screen.)

One thing that seems to cause a lot of confusion with Lymow owners is assuming the app screen is showing exactly what the mower is thinking at that exact second.

It's usually not that simple.

The app is more like you're texting the mower than sitting inside its brain. You send a command. The mower sends a status update back. Think of it like texting a friend in another town. Your friend says, “I’m heading over now.” A few minutes later they say, “I’m on Main Street.” That may have been true when they sent it, but it doesn’t mean you know their exact location right now.

The Lymow app works a lot like that. It shows the last useful thing it heard from the mower. Sometimes that message is absolutely current. Sometimes it’s a little late. Sometimes it’s a simplified label for something more complicated happening inside the mower. Meanwhile, the mower is still making its own decisions onboard. It has its own sensor inputs. It has its own task state. It has its own position estimate. It has its own battery and safety logic.

That matters because a lot of troubleshooting gets messy when people treat the app display as the complete truth. Here’s just a few examples of things I see people confuse in their posts:

1. “Offline” doesn't always mean the mower isn’t communicating.

Most times “offline” means the app isn’t getting a clean update or is not in communication with the mower. But sometimes the app will show an offline state while other parts of the app still appear to be getting fresh information. That’s the important distinction. If the app says offline, but the battery percentage changes, a new notification appears, the mower later reports what happened during that period, or Bluetooth still connects when you walk up to it, then the mower was not completely unreachable. The app may have had a stale or incorrect status label. It may have lost one communication path while another one still worked. Or the app may have failed to refresh the main status even though some data was still coming through.

That’s like texting your friend and seeing no reply in the main conversation, but their location or read receipt still updates. You don’t have a clean conversation with them, but they haven’t vanished either. The label you’re seeing is incomplete.

So “offline” should not automatically be read as “the mower is dead,” “the mower has no communication,” or “nothing is happening.” It means the app is reporting an offline state. Before treating that as the whole truth, look for contradictions. Is the battery still updating? Are notifications still coming in? And so on.

2. “Charging” doesn’t always mean the battery is accepting charge.

The app may say charging because the mower is on the dock. It may say charging because the last message from the mower looked like a charging state. The app can also show a stale charging state long after charging has actually stopped. And on the flip side, you may receive a "Charging Interrupted" notification after the mower has already resumed charging normally. But the better checks are still physical. Look at the light on the power supply. Always remember, red = active charging. Look at the dock light pattern. Watch whether the battery percentage actually rises.

Docked is one thing. Detected is another thing. Actually accepting charge is yet another thing.

That’s why someone can say, “It said charging, but it was dead the next morning.” The app may have seen the mower docked. It may have seen the first handshake. It may have shown the last good message it received. But if the battery didn’t actually accept charge, the label by itself doesn’t prove much. The BMS can also stop charging. Cold weather can do it. Excessive moisture can do it. A fault can do it. So if the app says charging, but the battery keeps dropping or never rises, don’t stop at the app label.

3. “Fixed” or .01 positioning precision does not mean every positioning problem is impossible.

The mower may show Fixed when you open the diagnostic page, but that doesn’t prove it was Fixed a minute earlier when it wandered, paused, or went out of bounds. It may have been Float before you looked. It may have been Not Ready. It may have been working with a stale or bad position. A screenshot after the fact is useful, but it’s not a time machine. The RTK diagnostic screen also doesn’t automatically update. This is why “it showed .01 when I checked” doesn’t always settle the issue. That .01 may be real at that moment. It may even be excellent. But the mower could have had a temporary bad position solution a few moments earlier and then corrected itself by the time you opened the app or it may be different now if you’ve kept that screen open.

It’s like your friend texting, “I’m on Main Street,” after they already made a wrong turn and corrected themselves. The message may be true now. It doesn’t tell you the whole route they took to get there.

4. And the map's mower icon isn't a physical tracker bolted to the mower.

The mower doesn't always precisely follow the little icon on your phone. The little icon follows whatever position the system is reporting. If the app shows the mower several feet away from where it really is, the mower may have a bad position estimate. The app may also be behind. The map view may not have refreshed cleanly. The physical mower is still acting on its internal position state, not on what the picture on your phone looks like. That distinction matters. If the mower thinks it's inside the zone, it may keep acting like it’s inside the zone even while you can see it somewhere else. If the mower thinks it's out of bounds, it may refuse to move even though it’s physically in a safe place well inside a zone.

The app is showing the reported state. It isn’t magically correcting the mower’s internal understanding of where it is. Same idea as your friend texting that they’re a few blocks away on Main Street. You can read the message. You can believe the message. But that doesn’t mean you can personally verify they are actually on Main Street instead of 2nd Ave unless you have more information.

5. Error state and task state can also be different.

A mower can be physically sitting still but still have a task loaded. It can be paused and still remember the route. It can be in an error state and still know where it intended to go next. That’s why “Clear Error,” “Resume,” “Cancel Task,” and “Dock” can produce very different behavior. Those commands don't all tell the mower the same thing. It’s also why canceling a task can sometimes make the mower behave differently than resuming it. Resume may tell the mower to continue the same job logic that got it into trouble. Cancel may clear the task path and put it into a different decision tree.

Same physical mower. Same yard. Different internal state.

6. Settings are another place where the app state and the mower state can quietly diverge.

Not all settings are the same layer. Global settings, zone settings, scheduled task settings, and runtime settings can all hold different values at the same time. A setting you change while a job is already running may not rebuild the task. Speed usually applies right away. But path structure, mowing order, channel behavior, and safe-margin mode may already be baked into the task the mower is executing. The mower isn't ignoring you. It's finishing work it planned before your change.

Runtime settings deserve a specific callout because they're easy to misread. When you open the runtime settings screen, what you see loaded there are default values, not the actual values the mower is currently running with. They look like "the mower's current settings." They aren't. They're a starting point for temporary adjustments to the job in progress. If you change something and the mower doesn't seem to respond, that gap between what the screen showed and what the mower had already planned is often why.

When a setting seems to be ignored, cancel the task and start a fresh one rather than assuming the mower is broken or the app is glitched.

7. The same idea applies to schedules.

A schedule isn’t a human instruction like, “Keep working through this list forever and pick up wherever you left off tomorrow.” It’s more like a stored task trigger. If rain interrupts the job, the app may not handle that the way a person would. If charging interrupts the sequence, same thing. If an error stops the mower and the next scheduled day arrives, the app may move on because that’s what the stored schedule says. Annoying, yes. But it’s a task-state issue, not necessarily the mower being “confused” in the human sense.

8 ) Notifications can lie about timing.

App delays can also make cause and effect look wrong. You may see a notification after the mower has already recovered. This happens a lot with charging messages. You may get a charging interrupted alert even though the mower is currently charging. You may get a theft alert when the mower is still on the dock. This can be caused by a momentary loss of GNSS data or where it calculates the location based on faulty satellite reception. You may see the mower shown in one place on the map after it has physically moved. That doesn’t mean the mower traveled through time. It usually means the visible app state is lagging behind the mower state.

Texting works the same way. Someone can text “I’m leaving now,” but by the time you read it, they may already be halfway there. The message wasn’t fake. It was just no longer the whole current situation.

This is why I’m careful about screenshots when people post them. A screenshot shows what the app displayed at that moment. A video shows what the mower physically did. Neither one is useless. Both help. But a screenshot by itself can send people chasing the wrong thing if the app state was stale, delayed, or only showing one layer of the system.

The app should obviously do a better job explaining what is live and what is stale. It should make clearer what is mower-side and what is app/server-side. It should also make clearer which settings apply immediately and which ones need a new task. Owners shouldn’t have to guess whether “offline” means dead, asleep, disconnected, logged out, or just not updating.

But once you understand that the app is not the mower’s brain, some odd behavior makes more sense.

The mower is a robot with its own onboard control systems. The app is the conversation window. The text bubble. Sometimes the conversation is current. Sometimes it's delayed. Sometimes the mower is doing something more complicated than the label suggests.

When troubleshooting, try to separate three things:

A. What the app says.
B. What the mower physically does.
C. What the diagnostics show at the time.

When those line up, diagnosis is straightforward. When they don't, the app screen alone isn't enough. Take screenshots and video when something weird happens, then describe the sequence in order.

"The app said this. The mower physically did this. The diagnostic screen showed this. Then I cleared the error and this happened."

That kind of post gets better answers faster than "it says offline" or "it showed Fixed". Those are pieces of the story, not the whole story.

Reposted from FB with permission:

Keeping Your Lymow Running: A Practical Cleaning Primer from Nick Carter

TL;DR

Your mower does not need to be showroom clean. It needs to be functionally clean. That means the parts that spin, slide, charge, dock, see, cool, and trigger safety sensors need to be clean enough to do their job. Grass packed under the deck, debris in the tracks, dirty cameras, filmed-over charging contacts, clogged bumper gaps, and wet grass paste around moving parts can all create real problems. But attacking the mower with a pressure washer, chemical cleaners, or brute force creates different problems. The right answer is boring: blow it off, brush it out, scrape what needs scraping, wipe the important parts, use water carefully when needed, and stop trying to make a lawn mower look like it belongs in the living room.

This Is Not a Showroom Cleaning Guide

Nobody cares if your mower looks pristine. This is about keeping grass buildup, mud, debris, moisture, and residue from turning into mechanical problems, charging problems, thermal problems, or false sensor readings. Think of it like checking the oil in a car. You don't check it because you want the dipstick to look clean. You check it because ignoring it can cost you an engine.

The goal is functional clean, not showroom clean. The blades should spin freely. The deck isn't packed with wet grass. The tracks aren't full of mud, sticks, grass, or gravel. The cameras can see. The dock target can be recognized. The charging contacts can make clean contact. The bumper can move and reset. Heat isn't being trapped under a blanket of grass paste. The mower doesn't need to be shiny. It needs to be able to do mower things without fighting its own debris.

That distinction matters. A little dry grass dust on the shell is irrelevant. A mat of wet grass packed around the blade housing is not. A few loose clippings on top are irrelevant. Mud wedged into the tracks is not. Water spots on the cover are irrelevant. A dirty camera lens, filmed-over charging contact, or bumper gap packed with grit is not.

Two Bad Habits

One thing I see over and over is people falling into one of two traps. One group treats the mower like waterproof farm equipment and blasts it like a muddy tractor. The other group treats it like it will dissolve if water or a brush touches it, so they let grass, mud, and debris slowly pack into every working area. Neither is right.

This is still a mower. It lives outside. It cuts grass. It runs through clippings, dust, pollen, sand, leaves, dew, and whatever random yard debris it finds. But it's also an autonomous electric mower with cameras, sensors, computer modules, charging contacts, wiring, connectors, blade motors, drive motors, bearings, tracks, and a battery. Cleaning it like an old gas push mower is the wrong mental model. So is treating it like it's made of tissue paper.

Start With Safety

Before cleaning under the mower, around the blades, inside the tracks, or near anything that moves, stop the mower, cancel any active task if needed, and either raise the deck through the (+) button, hit the emergency stop button, or power it off completely and/or disconnect the battery. Wear gloves if you need to. The blades are sharp even when the mower is off and the safest mower is one that cannot wake up while your hands are near it. Don’t trust “paused”. Don’t trust the app. Pull the battery if you’re going under the deck or near the blades and you’re worried about it. Make it a habit. Do I do this every time? Nope. But, if I don’t follow the safe route, I can hear my mother in my subconscious warning me to stop being so careless.

What You Need

A powered cordless handheld air gun is one of the most useful daily tools. Small, easy to use, and strong enough to blow loose grass, dust, and debris out of the deck, tracks, bumper gaps, camera area, and contact area. A leaf blower works well for the top shell, dock, tracks, and loose dry clippings. A stiff brush gets into track gaps and deck corners where grass is matted or air alone won't reach. A plastic or metal scraper, or horse hoof pick with a curved end, handles packed buildup under the deck. A soft cloth or microfiber handles camera lenses, charging contacts, and the dock target area.

What I don't recommend is a screwdriver used like a chisel or a metal putty knife with too much force behind it. You’re cleaning a robotic mower, not rebuilding a bulldozer. Don't stab seals, wires, connectors, plastic housings, sensor areas, or motor assemblies trying to get them clean. There’s just no need.

What to Avoid

No pressure washers. Water pressure forces moisture into bearings, connectors, and electronics that have no business getting wet. No chemical cleaners, solvents, alcohol, gasoline, acetone, or degreasers. These attack plastics, degrade seals, contaminate contacts, and create residue problems. No sharp, pointed metal scrapers on the deck underside. No brute force around the bumper assembly on the One, the sensors behind it are easy to damage. No submerging any part of this machine in water, ever.

Know Your Machine: One vs Plus Differences That Affect Cleaning

The One and the Plus share the same basic cleaning logic but have enough mechanical differences that a few things need to be called out specifically.

On the One, the charging contacts are spring-loaded pads on the dock that make contact with the underside of the mower. Grass film and oxidation on those contacts is a chronic issue that requires regular attention. The bumper system uses physical trigger gaps around the perimeter that debris actively packs into, causing false contact readings. These gaps need to be cleared with air regularly (or *gently* with something flat like a screwdriver – watch out for the microswitches), not occasionally. The One also lacks the passive track cleaning brushes that come standard on the Plus (unless you’ve received the upgrade kit), so manual track and idler wheel cleaning is more frequent and more important, especially with tighter tracks.

On the Plus, the charging architecture is different. The contact plates sit on top of the dock and mate with contacts on the topside of the mower differently than the One system. Keep both surfaces clean but don't assume what works on one applies directly to the other. The Plus blade motors run warmer under load than the One, which matters when deciding whether to immediately blast cold air or water into the deck area after a hard mow session. Give it a few minutes first. The Plus ships with side brushes that continuously sweep debris off the tracks during operation, which reduces but does not eliminate manual track cleaning needs.

Daily or After-Heavy-Use Cleaning

If the mower ran in dry grass and came back with light dust and loose clippings, this is a two-minute job. Blow off the top. Blow out the deck. Blow out the tracks. Wipe the cameras if they're dusty. Check under the deck for any big clumps, sticks, vines, or grass wrapped around anything. Done.

If the mower ran in wet grass, heavy dew, tall grass, thick weeds, leaves, or mud, don't treat that like a normal dry mow. Wet grass turns into paste. Paste sticks under the deck, in track pockets, around blade hardware, and in places where dry clippings would normally blow out. Pull the battery if you need to, push the E-stop button, or raise the deck with the (+) button (which automatically engages the E-stop state), position it safely, and actually clear the underside. You can do this after a day’s mowing or prior to the next day’s session.

On the One specifically, pay attention to the bumper area after every heavy-debris session. Debris packing into those bumper trigger gaps can cause the mower to behave as if it's registering a contact that isn't actually happening. A blast of air and a quick pick-through of those gaps keeps that sensor reading clean. Use air from multiple angles. Use the pick carefully if there's visible debris. Don't pry the bumper or jam anything heavy into the mechanism. The goal is to remove debris so the bumper can move normally, not to bend it into behaving or damage the delicate microswitches.

Weekly Routine Cleaning

Once a week during active mowing season, plan for 10 to 15 minutes. Again, power off and disconnect the battery first if desired.

Start underneath. The deck underside is where the real buildup happens. Use the pick or plastic scraper to loosen compacted grass around the blade housing, deck edges, guards, and anywhere grass paste collects. Follow with the air gun to blow out what you loosened. Two minutes of scraping followed by a good air blast will surprise you with how much comes out. The before and after photos here show what a Plus deck looks like coming off the lawn versus after two minutes of work. It's not subtle.

Check both blade assemblies while you're under there. Look for stringy grass, roots, twine, wire, vine, weed stems, or plastic wrapped around the hardware. Spin both sides by hand and compare. If one side is consistently louder, hotter, harder to spin, or packed with more debris than the other, pay attention to that. On the Plus, make sure the snap ring and bearings are in place and undamaged. Make sure the bolts are in place and tight. On the One, make sure the nuts are tightened and the blades are in place. Cleaning is also when you notice early mechanical problems before they become disabling ones.

Wipe the camera lenses and front sensor array with a soft dry cloth. The binocular camera and ultrasonic sensors get hit with grass spray and fine debris constantly. A dirty lens won't cause an immediate catastrophic failure but it will degrade obstacle detection over time. Same logic applies to the dock QR code and visual target area. If the mower is supposed to see it, clean it like it matters. This takes 30 seconds and there's no reason to skip it.

Clean the charging contacts. Grass film on those contacts is one of the most common causes of charging issues that get reported as mysterious problems. A dry cloth is usually enough. If there's residue or oxidation, use isopropyl on a cotton swab or a wet wipe, not a paper towel, not a brass brush unless things are really bad. Green scour pads also work well. If you use steel wool, blow and wipe everything clean afterward. Don't leave conductive fibers behind near contacts.

The Tracks Deserve Their Own Attention

The tracks are not just traction. They're where a lot of hidden problems start. Grass, mud, sticks, stones, acorns, bark, pinecones, pine straw, and packed dirt inside the track path creates drag, steering problems, odd turning behavior, and extra load on the drive system. The mower may still move but it's working harder than it should.

Start with air. Blow from the front, rear, top, and inside edges. Use the hooked pick to pull out anything wedged between the track, sprockets, rollers, idlers, and frame. Rotate the track by hand only when the mower is powered off or in E-stop mode. Also check for vines, twine, fishing line, or plastic strapping wrapped around sprockets or rollers. A mower can pick something up and carry it around for days.

Grass buildup around the idler wheel specifically can make the track look or feel tighter than it actually is. Before assuming you have a tension problem or a drive motor problem, clean the track path and idler area properly. A track packed with debris is not a clean diagnostic baseline.

Don't use brute force. If something is wedged, work it out carefully. Don't pry against plastic guides, wiring, or roller mounts. Cleaning is also a good time to compare both sides. One track with noticeably more tension, drag, debris, wear, or a different feel than the other is useful information.

The Plus Thermal Consideration

The Plus has a more aggressive dual-blade cutting system and we're already seeing blade motor thermal behavior, blade shutdown complaints, and blade-jam style errors in some conditions. Cleaning won't fix bad firmware logic or a bad motor controller or a bad bearing. But a dirty deck can make a marginal thermal situation worse.

Packed grass traps heat. Wet clippings insulate areas that need to shed heat. Debris around blade hardware creates drag. Drag creates more current draw. More current draw creates more heat. More heat makes the mower more likely to hit thermal thresholds or trigger blade shutdown behavior. On the Plus, deck cleaning is not cosmetic. It's part of keeping the cutting system from working harder than necessary.

Let the mower cool for a few minutes before cleaning after a hard mow. Air cleaning is fine immediately. And if one side is consistently noisier, hotter, rougher to spin, or more prone to shutdown, that's when cleaning crosses over into diagnostics. Document what you find.

Water Use

This is where people overcorrect in both directions.

An IPX6 water-resistance rating is a controlled laboratory test standard. It is not permission to pressure wash every seam, bearing, connector, camera, charging contact, and motor area from three inches away. It doesn't mean seals never age. It doesn't mean mud abrasion never matters. It doesn't mean impacts, manufacturing variation, or a damaged seal can never put water where it doesn't belong.

So yes, you can use water carefully. No, you should not use a pressure washer.

A light rinse from a low-pressure garden hose is different from a high-pressure jet. Use low pressure. Keep distance. Spray downward or across surfaces, not directly into seams, bearings, connectors, cameras, charging contacts, motor areas, or dock electronics. Avoid blasting upward into openings under the deck. If you use water, let the mower dry before charging or storing in a closed space. Don't hose a hot mower immediately after a thermal shutdown.

The safest workflow is dry cleaning first. Blow off loose debris. Brush and scrape the heavy stuff. Pull out packed clumps. Then use a damp rag or light rinse only where dry cleaning isn't enough. Water is the helper and a last resort, not the main tool.

Infrequent or Seasonal Cleaning

A few times per season, do a more thorough pass. Pull the battery. Clean under the deck more thoroughly. Clean inside the empty battery compartment. Remove blades if needed. Inspect blade condition. Check blade bolts. Spin both blade assemblies by hand and compare. You're not diagnosing by hand feel alone but you're looking for changes: roughness, grinding, unusual resistance, noise, or anything that feels different from the other side.

Check the tracks more carefully. Look inside the track loop. Check rollers, idlers, and sprockets. Look for loose or missing screws. Clean hardened debris out of corners. If the track looks overly taut or you're hearing unusual drive noise, clean the idler and track path before assuming a mechanical problem.

Don't forget the dock. Cleaning the mower and ignoring the dock is half a job. Blow leaves, debris, dead bugs, and grass out from under and around it. Clean the QR code and visual target area. Thoroughly clean the contact plates or pads. Make sure the dock hasn't shifted, sunk, tilted, or filled underneath with soil, clippings, ants, or water.

What Not to Do

No pressure washer. No harsh chemical cleaners or solvents. No submersion. No hosing a hot mower right after a thermal shutdown. No scraping camera lenses. No prying bumpers. No metal tools digging around electrical connectors. No screwdriver-as-chisel near seals, wiring, motor housings, or plastic guides. No mowing with a deck packed full of wet grass just because the mower technically still moves. And no assuming "waterproof" means "immune to bad cleaning habits".

Also, don't chase perfection. If you're spending 45 minutes removing every dust speck from the shell, you're wasting your time. If you're leaving a mat of wet grass packed around the cutting system, you're creating your own problems. The mower should look used but not look neglected.

The Cleaning Standard

Can the blades spin freely? Can the tracks move freely? Can the cameras see? Can the dock target be recognized? Can the charging contacts make clean contact? Can the bumper move and reset? Can heat escape instead of being trapped under wet grass?

If yes, it's clean enough. If no, clean the part that matters.

Most cleaning doesn't need to be dramatic. Two minutes after a mow. Ten minutes once a week. A deeper check a few times per season. That's usually enough unless your yard is wet, sandy, muddy, leafy, or full of heavy growth.

These mowers are robots, but they're still lawn mowers. Treat them like both.

https://preview.redd.it/qoh62bt0e4ah1.jpg?width=506&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2d2156317ffae7fb190885ee9cc7cb611355b6e2

Republished from FB with permission:

Nick Carter primer: How to Talk to Support So You Don't Waste Two Weeks

TL;DR: Slow support isn't your fault, and no ticket fixes a stretched-thin team. But a ticket with real evidence (firmware version, screenshots, RTK diagnostic fields, video, what you've already tried) gives a front-line agent enough to skip the script and either fix it or escalate fast, while a vague one guarantees days of back-and-forth to reach the same starting point. Logs alone aren't a request, they're evidence that needs context. Before you open a ticket at all, check whether the answer's already written down here. A lot of what gets submitted as a problem is actually a question this group has already answered. And don't push for a quick replacement mower as a shortcut, especially for design-level issues like the documented overheating problem. A new unit just repeats the same failure and costs everyone more time.

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Let me be clear about what this primer is and isn't. This isn't about defending Lymow's support response times, and it isn't about putting the burden on you to write a perfect ticket before you're allowed to get help. Slow support is still slow support, and a well-written ticket sitting unanswered for a week is still a failure on their end, not yours. What this is about is something narrower and more useful (for both you and Lymow): how to give yourself the best possible chance of getting past the first-line script and to the person who can actually fix your problem, instead of getting stuck in a loop of basic questions that a good ticket could have skipped entirely.

Most support delays aren't caused by support enjoying repetitive questions. They happen because support is trying to eliminate possibilities before escalating to engineering. Uploading logs is important, but logs by themselves are not a support request, they're evidence. Without context, they're often just a pile of data nobody knows how to read. None of that excuses a slow or silent ticket. But it does mean that, within a flawed system, there's a real difference between a ticket that gets stuck and one that doesn't, and that difference is mostly within your control.

One of the most common complaints I see in the groups is that support keeps asking the same questions over and over. The mower's lost, won't charge, won't dock, throws an error. The owner submits a ticket. Support asks for logs, screenshots, firmware version, a video, whether it's been rebooted, whether the contacts are clean. The owner gets frustrated because it feels like they're filling out paperwork instead of getting a fix.

That frustration is fair. The mower's connected to the cloud, the app's connected to the cloud, so why doesn't Lymow already know what's wrong?

Because support knows far less than owners think they do. People imagine a dashboard somewhere in China showing every mower in the world in real time, with engineers watching each one. That's not how this works. Support can see some data tied to your unit in real time (not necessarily when the problem cropped up), but they can't see your yard. They can't see your dock location, whether your contacts are dirty, whether your RTK is mounted under a tree, or whether the mower spent three hours quietly fighting a fence.

That's where logs come in. But logs by themselves still aren't the whole request. They need context to be useful.

I see people post "logs uploaded, waiting on support", like that's all they needed to do. It's not. That's a little like handing your doctor a blood sample and saying "figure it out". The sample has useful information in it, but only if someone knows what symptoms to look for, roughly when it started, and what happened right before. Same with a flight recorder: hand it to an investigator without telling them whether you're looking at a rough landing, an engine failure, or a bird strike, and you've made the investigation far harder than it needed to be, not because the data's missing, but because nobody knows where to start looking in it.

A good ticket pairs the evidence with the context.

Bad request: "My mower is lost and acting crazy. It went out of bounds."

Good request: "Lymow One Plus, SN: LR1XXXXXXX0000, Firmware 2.1.48.

Issue: Mower loses position and crosses the boundary only in Zone 3, southwest corner near the property line. Doesn't happen anywhere else in the yard.

Pattern: Happens consistently after about 15 minutes of mowing in that zone, not at the start. Reproduced three times over the past week, same spot each time. Started after the 2.1.48 update, don't recall it happening on 2.1.46.

Diagnostics at time of event: RTK Fixed, .02m precision, Base Station Online, Differential Age 1 sec, LoRa 732/843/991, Data Error Rate 0%.

Already tried: Rebooted the mower and RTK. Remapped the Zone 3 boundary twice. Tested in open sky away from Zone 3, no issue there. Checked for power loss and loose connections on the RTK mount, nothing visibly wrong.

Attached: video of the out-of-bounds event, screenshot of the RTK diagnostic screen taken during the event, logs uploaded same day."

The first one guarantees days of follow-up questions. The second eliminates most of them before they're asked, since anyone reading it can already see the correction link is healthy and the problem is localized, not a general mower-to-RTK communication failure.

Before you open a ticket, check whether the answer already exists

A meaningful share of what gets submitted as a support ticket isn't actually a problem, it's a question that's already been answered, sometimes dozens of times, in this group, in the Unofficial Handbook, or in one of the primers I’ve written. RTK Fixed versus Float, what Differential Age means, why accuracy drops under trees, why dock location matters, why a firmware update sometimes changes behavior, etc. None of that is obscure information you're expected to already know walking in. It’s also not realistic for Lymow support to re-teach the same concepts one ticket at a time. It's written down. Search the group first. Search the error code or symptom. Check the handbook. Read my primers. Most of the time, the answer is already sitting there, written by someone who hit the exact same thing weeks or months ago.

This isn't about gatekeeping help or making anyone feel bad for not knowing something. Nobody's born understanding what a Differential Age is. That's the whole reason these primers exist. The point is narrower. Every ticket that's really a question with a documented answer is time support spends not looking at someone else's mower that's actually broken. If everyone's first move is a ticket instead of a search, support spends their day re-explaining the same five concepts over and over, and the people with a genuine hardware failure or a real firmware bug wait longer behind a queue full of questions a five-minute search would have answered. That's not a hypothetical. It's a real part of why response times are what they are.

So before you submit anything: search the group, check the handbook, see if it's a known pattern. If it is, you've got your answer in minutes instead of days. If it isn't, you've just done half the diagnostic work already, and that's exactly the kind of ticket that gets a fast, useful answer instead of a script.

Why it works this way

The first person reading your ticket isn't the engineer who wrote the firmware or designed the charging circuit. Think of it like an ER. The person you meet first isn't the surgeon, it's the triage nurse, and their job isn't to perform surgery, it's to figure out whether you need it. Support works the same way: gather information, rule out the common stuff, decide what actually needs to go further up.

If every ticket went straight to engineering, engineers would spend their day on dirty contacts, unplugged RTKs, and bumper sensors packed with grass clippings, instead of fixing the firmware bugs and navigation issues that actually need them. The triage step isn't bureaucracy for its own sake. It's what keeps the people who can fix the hard problems working on the hard problems. A ticket with real diagnostic data in it is also what gives a front-line agent a clear reason to say "this isn't standard, send it up", rather than defaulting to the script because that's all they have to go on.

This also explains some of what feels like slowness, though again, explaining it isn't excusing it. Lymow is still a relatively small startup company supporting owners across multiple continents, time zones, and languages, without a network of regional service centers the way an established outdoor power equipment brand might have after decades in business. A mower in Canada, Poland, and Australia may all end up reviewed by the same small engineering team or even the same engineer. A detailed ticket doesn't fix that capacity problem. It just makes sure your ticket isn't adding unnecessary rounds to an already strained process.

Why a quick replacement isn't always the win it looks like

It's an easy ask. Your mower isn't working or your battery isn’t charging, send a new one, problem solved. But that often solves nothing if it’s user error, unrealistic expectations, or a bad design.

Take the overheating issue lots of people have documented this past month or two. A group of us beta testers showed, through hours of logged thermal testing, that the evidence points strongly toward the motor controller as the main failure mode we were seeing, not the blade motors, and that it's an airflow problem with the One Plus's enclosure, not a defective unit. If support's answer to every overheating ticket is a replacement mower, that fixes nothing. The replacement has the identical design and will overheat the identical way under the identical conditions. The owner's back where they started in a few weeks, except now Lymow has spent the cost of shipping two complete mowers across the planet for nothing, and the actual cause is still sitting there unaddressed. The same goes for someone with poor GNSS reception under a heavy canopy of trees. Sending them a replacement mower doesn't move their trees.

Replacing hardware before understanding the failure is a lot like replacing your car's battery every time the check-engine light comes on. Sometimes you'll get lucky. Most of the time you've swapped an expensive part and kept the real problem. A mower that keeps going out of bounds because the RTK is mounted next to a metal shed creating multipath interference will do exactly the same thing with a brand-new setup. The shed didn't ship with the replacement mower. That's why support is often reluctant to jump straight to a replacement (mower, dock, or battery). They're trying to find out whether it's actually a hardware defect before shipping a mower halfway around the world for nothing.

How to actually contact them

Email support@lymow.com. Upload logs from inside the app, then email support with the problem context - mentioning the uploaded logs. If you don’t get an automated reply with a ticket number almost immediately, your email didn’t go through. Try from a different email address. If a ticket's gone quiet, reply in that same thread rather than opening a new one. A new ticket restarts triage from zero and loses your history. A reply keeps everything attached. Having six open tickets instead of one doesn’t help you. It just means six different agents potentially working the same problem in parallel, none of them with the full picture.

What to include so you're not asked for it later

A screenshot of the Device Info page. Screenshots of the RTK diagnostic screen with the Advanced section expanded if positioning's involved, not just the overall status but Base Station Status, Differential Age, and LoRa Bandwidth specifically, since those are what actually separate a link problem from a GNSS problem. A screenshot beats a description almost every time. "Differential Age was high" means different things to different people. A screenshot shows exactly what you saw, and numbers don't need translation. A screenshot of your RTK diagnostic screen tells me exactly what's happening whether you're posting from New Zealand or Germany, and it tells Lymow support the same thing. A written description filtered through a language barrier, autocorrect, and varying technical vocabulary might mean five different things to five different people.

Also send a short video of the behavior, again not just a description of it. The date and approximate time it happened (that should be in your log too). What the mower was doing right before. And critically, what you've already tried: contacts cleaned, mower rebooted, RTK moved, tested in open sky, whatever it is. Every step you've already ruled out is one less round of questions before anyone gets to the actual problem.

None of this guarantees a fast answer. Some tickets, even good ones, will still sit too long, and that's worth saying plainly rather than pretending a well-written ticket fixes a support team that's stretched thin. But one reason they're stretched thin is that they are being inundated by trivial or nondescript problems that didn’t need a ticket in the first place. In other cases, they have to waste days and dozens of back-and-forth emails extracting the critical information that could have been provided at the outset. A detailed ticket, on an issue that actually needs one, gives you the best odds of skipping the first round of script questions and landing in front of someone who can actually look at your specific problem. That's the whole goal here. Not to defend the system. Just to help you move through it faster, and to help everyone else's ticket move faster too.

The best tickets don't just describe the symptom. They describe the system. The engineer reading your ticket wasn't standing in your yard when it happened. Your job is to make them feel like they were. That's usually the difference between an answer in days instead of weeks, when the system is working the way it's supposed to.

I will need to go from Shenzen to HKIA for a Fiji Air flight next month. The airline doesn't have a counter at Shekou Port but I can check in online and get a digital boarding pass. I will have no checked baggage.

If I rock up at Shekou Port with that boarding pass, a passport and a QR code for the ferry ticket, is that all I need to get through Chinese exit formalities and onto the ferry?

The airline thinks it should be fine - I just need to be sure there's no fishhooks. Has someone else done the same, i.e. digital boarding pass is enough?

Thanks!

Crossposting from FB:

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Unofficial Handbook update

The latest Setup, Maintenance, Troubleshooting and Hints handbook condenses a year of great info from this and other Lymow forums - almost totally UNofficial.

Additions for v3.0 include:

* Now with appendices!

* Lymow Error code list

* Reddit links to all Nick Carter's Lymow Primers

* Colour coding for model-specific info

* Resolving Plus charging issues

* Deeper fixes for certain Bluetooth and WiFi issues

* Expanded RTK information and explanations

* Links to some Very Interesting user projects

...and much more besides.

Use the handbook freely and please recommend it to others to save time. It can be found at either of:

https://files.catbox.moe/e3juc3.pdf
OR
https://drive.proton.me/urls/M16SA71DMG#IL1_h1fldlAO

Is it Tuesday again already? What happened to Sunday?