Good morning,

Does anyone know which settings I should adjust on my Automower 410IQ to prevent it from digging holes at the edges of the defined mowing zones (see image)? These spots are where the robot turns. The wheels have completely worn away the grass, and the holes are getting deeper. I have tried setting the boudaries much further on the driveway but the mower keeps getting stuck it in it.

Thank you very much in advance.

My current boundary wire mower is just over six years old. It still runs, but the battery is getting weaker and I seem to spend more time repairing the wire or rescuing it when it gets stuck. The lawn is around 700 sqm. The front is right beside the road, while the back has a few trees. There's a stone wall and the house along one side, with a tall hedge on the other. I’m mainly looking at Mova and Segway.

Going wire free is the main reason I want to upgrade, but I also need reliable navigation near the trees and buildings. What mower did you upgrade from and what did you replace it with? Once you finished mapping and adjusted the settings after the first few runs, did the routes and obstacle avoidance improve? Did you get fewer odd detours or missed areas? Any new trade offs with a wire free mower?

I see Lymow has released the production kit for the 1+ cooling solution. I was one of the Betas testing with the 3D printed design. I can say that my testing was successful. I had my unit parked in the sun in the middle of the hottest part of the day for an hour, per the testing protocol, and then it ran my unit. Starting deck hood temp was 141.3 F. My grass was long and my RPMs were Power. No blade stoppage or derate. I did a multihour run and checked the hood temp every 30 min. Highest recorded temp was 143.6 F.

Installation was a little tricky, but i know many of us gave suggestions to simplify it, and it sounds like Lymow listened to us.

If you have overheating problems and haven't ordered the free kit yet, I would do it.

I currently have about an 1.25acre of lawn. 95% of it is handled by my 54” deck riding mower. However, there are certain sections where the space between the trees and the fence that my riding mower isn’t accessible and part of it is on the slope. Currently, I have to use my push mower for those area, and I’m wondering if there is any affordable robot mower that can just mow those few sections with some slope.

Riding mower takes me 1 hr or so, then pushing mower for the 5% of the yard is also taking me a hour because of walking around the perimeter, which isn’t good use of my time. I’m hoping to just eliminate that portion of the mowing.

Circled is an example where I have to use my push my mower. My riding mower would cut into the flower bed.

Hi everyone,

We’re opening applications for the next ANTHBOT Beta Test Program and are looking for lawn owners who enjoy trying new technology and are willing to share detailed, honest feedback.

Based on feedback from our community, we’ve made significant improvements to our next-generation robotic mower, and we’re inviting a small group of users to help us test and refine the product before launch.

We’re especially interested in hearing from people who:

• Own a home with a lawn
• Enjoy testing smart home devices and new technology
• Can actively participate during the testing period by sharing feedback and real-world experiences

As this is a pre-release product, selected testers will be required to keep beta-related information confidential during the testing period.

Apply here:

• 🇺🇸 English: https://forms.gle/cxMiMwqEwZwNGMjC9
• 🇩🇪 Deutsch: https://forms.gle/AxbWETpAQPGjznPi7

We’re selecting a limited number of testers, so applications are encouraged before the program closes in mid-August.

🇺🇸 Additional Opportunity: Help Us Improve Robotic Lawn Care

Our ANTHBOT Product Team will be visiting homeowners across the U.S. in mid-August for in-home lawn research.

Participants will:

• Receive $100/hour for their time
• Meet our product team and share real-world lawn insights
• Receive priority consideration for our Beta Program and future ANTHBOT testing opportunities

Interested in participating? Apply here:

https://forms.gle/CZsopALo2EqRUXvJ6

Thanks to everyone who helps us build better robotic mowers. Real-world feedback from lawn owners is what helps shape the products we create next.

I have a Mammotion Yuka mini 800 and wanted to protect it with a garage. The plastic Mammotion one is $200 and not that good looking.

This one is made from a rigid plastic window well that I attached some artificial turf to with double sided tape. It cost me about $70 all-in and so far is holding up great. I needed it to be made from plastic instead of wood or metal to not interfere with the RTK signal.

Here’s a link to the window well - https://www.homedepot.com/p/SHAPE-PRODUCTS-37-in-x-24-in-Round-Plastic-Window-Well-3724AWC/330413266

https://preview.redd.it/w8hiwnqkmnjh1.png?width=468&format=png&auto=webp&s=6748040b08e50aedf45671202c96649f90ea5d1b

TL;DR: Great robot. Wrong robot for my yard. LiDAR and obstacle avoidance were excellent, cut quality was excellent, it never did anything stupid. But castering front wheels, not quite enough power, and tall St. Augustine stolons added up to too much fighting. Automapping was worthless for me; manual mapping worked fine once I figured out the undocumented rules. Sending it back and looking at AWD options.

Why I bought it

Full LiDAR, dual cutting disks, an edge trimmer, and a 3.54" max cutting height. That last number matters: for St. Augustine in Texas heat, the recommendation is roughly 3.5" to 4", and I'd been running 4" to help the lawn survive. So I was buying in at the absolute bottom of my acceptable range and hoping more frequent cutting would offset it. I also liked how light it is.

Day 1

Don't lose the LiDAR cover. Don't lose the LiDAR cover. Don't lose the LiDAR cover.

Assembly was straightforward. Siting the dock was harder than I expected because of my driveway, so budget more thought there than I did.

Pairing was simple, it pulled an update immediately, and I appreciate that it requires a PIN.

Initial mapping did not go well. The trimmer side should be to the inside, but automap ran it with the trimmer to the outside, so the housing kept bumping into things. (Not cutting, just contact.)

The two-speed problem. Manual driving has essentially two speeds, and the faster one is only available going dead straight. The moment you turn, it drops to the slow speed. That's a real problem turning in deep grass, turning onto an uphill, or working across a slope. My slope isn't steep, but it isn't gentle either. It sits right in the annoying middle.

Straight up the hill and straight down the hill: no issues at all. The trouble is turns at the bottom and traversing across the face. I planned a wider buffer along the downhill side near the curb because of it.

Getting it to track straight across the hill under manual control is a fight, and the castering front wheels are the culprit. I started wondering whether I should have gone AWD, but most AWD models I looked at use omni wheels, and the tank turns those do would shred parts of my yard. (I've seen what they did to my neighbor's.)

Grass height. My St. Augustine was too tall and the little teeth on the front kept snagging stolons, so I went back out with the push mower and took it down. That helped navigation a lot, but it also confirmed that the slow manual speed is too slow and the fast speed is too fast. I want a slower fast speed.

This probably reads like a lot of complaining. Honestly some of it is my learning curve, some is a manual that leaves out important things, some is a genuine product limitation (those castering wheels), and some is just my yard.

Day 2

Front yard, ~8,400 sq ft. Slopes from house to street, about 5 degrees across most of it, steepening just before a 6" curb. I re-mapped it manually and left a solid 18" buffer off the curb.

Then I sent it on a test run. Remember I'd just cut to 3.5" with the push mower and the machine's max is 3.54", so there was essentially zero margin.

It went much better than Day 1. The dips where my shutoff valves sit are deep, and it struggled dropping into the "bowl," but it worked out a path around, up, and out. Not a stunning success, but it solved it.

The bigger issue stayed the same: stolons catching the front cow catcher teeth, sometimes slowing it dramatically, sometimes stopping it outright until it worked itself free.

The most impressive part: driving across the face of the steep-ish section by the road, it never slid downhill. It tracked remarkably close to my original mapped path. A+ on that.

Back yard, ~4,000 sq ft. Simpler shape, denser and lusher grass, slopes back to front, bordered by a stepped pool wall on one side and a large privacy wall on the other.

I gave automap one more shot. Utter failure. It drove into the stepped pool wall (no chance of going over) and wedged itself so badly that even the reverse-out command couldn't free it. I had to tug it back.

Back to manual mapping, which was much easier here. Still fighting the two-speed movement, no gradual turning at full speed, and a low speed that sometimes lacked the torque to power through a hooked stolon. The resulting map was good, I confirmed it saved, and sent it on a test run.

Denser grass meant more stolons in the cow catcher, plus some wrapping the rear wheels. Notably, raising the cutting height doesn't seem to raise the nose at all, so you can't buy clearance that way.

One tricky dip, some "steps," and it handled all of it without freaking out. I manually drove one unmapped section over Bluetooth because the ledge risk was too high to trust to a map.

Then I sent it home: around the pool, around a chaise lounge,, umbrella stand, and about 3' away from the pool at the closest point and then around the garage. Completely uneventful. It threaded a 36" gap, dodged loose objects on the ground, and docked quickly.

What's genuinely good

• LiDAR works great. Obstacle avoidance was excellent.
• No issues in 100F+ heat. I was wilting following it around; it just kept going.
• Watching it through the camera is awesome. I wish every mower had this.
• Cut quality from the dual disks is very good, and the wide deck meant fewer passes. It rarely missed leaves.
• Incredibly quiet. Most of the time I couldn't hear the blades at all.
• Never went out of bounds, made sensible turn decisions, never did anything dumb.
• No trouble going straight up or straight down my hill.
• Once I understood the mapping model, adding and editing zones was easy.

What isn't

• Automapping was worthless for me. Probably fine on a simple yard.
• Castering front wheels, the root of most of my grief.
• Not enough power at low speed to push through deep grass or a hooked stolon.
• Two-speed manual control with no gradual turning at speed.
• The manual doesn't explain the mapping model, and that omission cost me a map.
• Never got a chance to try the trimmer.

Verdict

It's not a keeper for me. There's a lot I genuinely like/love about it, but the hardware can't handle my grass and my yard. I'd bet that if my grass were a quarter inch lower I'd have had dramatically fewer problems, but I can't cut lower and keep St. Augustine alive in this heat.

What I actually need: LiDAR (non-negotiable), more power, and no castering front wheels, but also no omni wheels, because those tank turns would destroy sections of my yard. That points me toward something AWD.

Best fit I've found so far is the Roborock RockMow X120H with LiDAR, though I'm not ready to drop $3,200 + tax on it. It's also close to 50 lbs, which matters because one of my zones has a curb too high for it to cross, so I'd be lifting it in and out by hand. Its cutting width is also much narrower than the A2000's. Ideally I'd want a 4" max cutting height.

To be clear: if I didn't have this particular combination of a challenging yard and St. Augustine, the Ecovacs GOAT A2000 LiDAR Pro would be an awesome option. If they made this mower with AWD with steerable front wheels, I'd likely be singing its praises.

Getting the right mower for your specific yard really is everything.