#yarbo — Public Fediverse posts

#Yarbo is, once again, trucking along as absolutely nobody is outside thanks to the heat.

I cannot overstate how much of a Godsend it is to let it do its thing rather than physically hurt myself trying to do it with a gas mower.

Is it perfect? No. But I don't need it to be because anything it might miss, I can still use it to manually clean up later.

I would not have bought it at full price, but I am SO glad I got the early bird discount and upgraded, despite the issues that caused at the time.

So, I can now say I've sweat into my own eyes. Heat index of over 90°F and #Yarbo threw its tread on a slope, hard, so guess who had to go at it with branded lubricant, a rubber mallet, and the various included tools?

I'd given the treads a little slack thinking that was the best idea somehow, but after ruining one clean white tee and one nice pair of jeans with something akin to road gunk, I feel like it may be wisest to tighten up the other one tomorrow before I try to finish up the yard.

On the plus side, catnip worked nicely as mosquito repellent and I was literally watching the little buggers land and calculate whether I was more delicious than disgusting. Ended up with a couple bites on my fingers because I made the mistake of breathing too hard and clearing the catnip scent with my delicious CO2 they can't seem to resist. But I've ordered some catnip spray from Wal-Mart for ease and convenience.

Well. I never actually expected to post about #Yarbo and #AcuRiteAtlas in the same breath, but here we are.

Yarbo appears to have somehow knocked over Atlas, ripping its own anchoring pegs that I used straight out of the ground to do so.

I'm posting this to keep myself from screaming. Luckily, I actually just ordered another Atlas for parts because I couldn't find my old one.

Wish me luck.

Well, it may have been VERY out of spec, but using the techniques imparted to me by my mother from her father before her on how not to turn oneself into a smoothie, I have proved that #Yarbo is capable of mowing a slope far beyond what it's rated for.

It's nothing I would expect anyone to be able to program and certainly does not fit into the programmable spec, but my options were either use Yarbo to do it or use the gas mower to do it and, well, I should get the gas mower started for the year, but that can happen this weekend.

Ein Sicherheitsforscher fand in Yarbo-Mährobotern ein Root-Passwort, das weltweit auf allen Geräten identisch ist. 90 Kilo Metall und Klingen - aus der Ferne steuerbar. #Yarbo https://winfuture.de/news,158589.html?utm_source=Mastodon&utm_medium=ManualStatus&utm_campaign=SocialMedia

So.

#Yarbo just served a security function. There was a raccoon poking around the cat house and thanks to Yarbo, that raccoon is probably going to reconsider that. The cat food is safely inside. The kitty cam light is off, signaling the kitties not to come. Nobody was hurt. The whole thing was zero contact.

Raccoons are naturally skittish and they hate stuff like dogs, so Yarbo got to play the role of a guard dog for a bit.

Just a wee update on #Yarbo. It seems the Trimmer is a bit smarter than I expected and the second cable port in back of Yarbo is, indeed, a data cable port.

The trimmer isn't running all the time and seems to have a sensor and step motor of some sort that, combined with a blade hidden in what I struggle not to call a "blister," keeps the line to a more or less fixed length automatically. It was smart enough to recognize the line wasn't pulled out. The only real issue is the line itself is held on the spool on two sides and you only want to release one end of it, with no clear indication of which end or if it can be either. DO NOT do both! Honestly just doing one offers plenty of opportunity to make a mess of it. XD

After re-checking the rubber cap, I am somewhat more confident in it, but to be brutally honest, I'm still not thrilled with the lack of any sort of cover. There are slots that look like they could hold one, but that might also block the cameras. There is now a distinct ceiling on the rear camera and I'd like to say that might provide some rain protection, but... not from any sort of splash. I feel like this is going to need to shelter under the eaves for any sort of storm. Not that I wasn't doing that already for the scarier ones.

#Yarbo

#Yarbo is now all together as a mower with the trimmer add-on and everything! Really made the best use of my daylight!

But... it's a wind chill of literally freezing out; my hands are screaming; everything kind of got thrown into the garage; and I will worry about putting everything away properly once I'm done being very, very horizontal. XD

Being brutally honest? The trimmer is easy enough to mount once you have the mounting bracket on, but the bracket itself requires a lot of unscrewing and re-screwing structural bolts and it leaves zero protection for the power button. I wish I could say I was super confident in the rubber cap for the charging cable, but I'm not.

Somehow getting out there made the treads seem like a good idea.

I got one swapped out, and after this supper break... I kind of have no choice but to do the other one. XD

#Yarbo

Somehow I woke up at 5:30 this morning after waking up at 6:00 for like a week. Mom was visiting my brother, but I basically told her I was dying and had a splitting headache and couldn't be social. Now I somehow found some energy to start swapping out #Yarbo parts. TBQH, I should do the treads next, but depending on the light, my back, and how I feel after food, I may just throw the mower on and call it good for this weekend.

The posts were... a rather surprising pain to swap out. But the last thing I need is to do one tread and not the other.

...F me, even just typing this, I'm kind of crashing again. Mower it is.

Smart Garden Robot Yarbo Secures Nearly 200M Yuan in Financing, New Product Crowdfunding Exceeds $1.5M in 6 Hours https://www.allforgardening.com/1677465/smart-garden-robot-yarbo-secures-nearly-200m-yuan-in-financing-new-product-crowdfunding-exceeds-1-5m-in-6-hours/ #garden #GlobalMarketExpansion #IndustrialCapital #IntelligentGardenRobot #MSeries #ModularProduct #MultiSensorFusionNavigationSystem #NewRoundOfFinancing #OutdoorPowerEquipment #SnowRemovalEquipment #Yarbo

New #Yarbo part arrived. Some kind of mounting bracket? I can only assume this is to help stabilize the trimmer, or maybe is a multi-use part included in the cost of the various attachments. Or a free gift. They've given a surprising number of those over the years. Rated up to 200 lbs.!

Been a hot minute since I said anything about #Yarbo. Well, the trimmer attachment came.

I would make a joke, but it certainly arrived in time for spring. XD

Yarbo itself has been doing mostly fine on the driveway and the last update fixed thr biggest pain of its operation, so I feel like I don't need to watch it as closely. I mean I still need to watch it, because I don't control where the wind blows, but I feel like there's less reason to panic when someone takes a drive around the block. Yarbo doesn't quite completely stop while it adjusts the throw direction, but it slows to a dribble that's not going to go into the street. That means it's much safer than the coordinated dance it used to do that absolutely would because everything stopped at different rates.

Clearly the solution here is "screw it, it's frigid anyway, do it at like 11:00 at night when literally everyone else is asleep."

Which, I mean, isn't cutting into MY sleep any, but it's annoying that I, already a Morlock, need to play vampire while I'm at it because God help that I do anything during normal people waking hours.

Because the whole job in total takes maybe 15 minutes if you just let it run, but easily double that if you're having to stop and wait for everyone to slow roll past.

I know this sounds incredibly petty and like a first world problem, but when the cold is blowing straight through your thermal gloves and you try to tell yourself you can tough it out for a few more minutes and then the literal pain says you can't, having to screw around with things taking longer than necessary does feel a little aggravating.

#Yarbo

Rather annoyed. It's freaking COLD out there and you would THINK that tomorrow being a holiday people would be out of town today, but no, after hearing no traffic and deciding to have #Yarbo clear the driveway, suddenly a conga line of cars! And because the way Yarbo pauses means different components finish doing their commands rather than everything just halting, it opens up room for error every time I have to do it as a car approaches lest some gust of wind blind them with snow and get me in trouble.

These movements DO work in coordination if you let it just run, smoothly, without issue, which makes it such a PITA when people mess it up and potentially make it do something it otherwise wouldn't that it really shouldn't.

I cannot stress enough how much effort #Yarbo saves me. I had it do a couple rows in the plow area last night, really just enough to get it to where the "lower drive" area starts, and after work I just had it do the lower and upper drive like normal. Fifteen minutes later, I was out getting my pills.

Edit: I should clarify I was out of pills and not having them would have made it much harder to take care of the driveway and get them. Shoveling could have taken a couple hours I didn't have and dang near killed me in the process, if I even could have finished in one day. And maybe I could've driven over it or maybe I'd have gotten stuck. I didn't have to worry about anything but making sure Yarbo didn't get stuck.

#Yarbo officially has the plow blade on and OMG, this snow is not snow, nor is it slush. If this stuff fell in the toilet it would clink. There's water at the bottom of the driveway and after encountering that, Yarbo got clogged, and even after clearing it, it just started compacting rather than throwing like it did starting out. Getting the plow blade on, even the double pass was just straight up rolling it into snowballs that keep escaping rather than being pushed off to the side. It's like I have a driveway full of self assembling Snow Goons.

Yarbo is in the garage thawing because trying to get the stuff out of it made it immediately turn to solid ice. I have had wet, heavy snows in my life, but nothing like this.

New blog post!

☆An honest review of the Yarbo experience☆

To start this off, I'm going to be breaking this up into distinct sections: the robot itself, the customer service, the snow performance, the lawn performance, and trials and tribulations.

The robot

Let me just start this off by saying I got the original robot and then I paid a bit more to upgrade to the c(...) https://blog.bluestarcreations.net/blues-reviews/an-honest-review-of-the-yarbo-experience/

#BluesReviews #hardware #robots #robotics #Yarbo

I'm at almost 1800 steps in part from managing #Yarbo today, which isn't bad all things considered. I can scarcely imagine how many it would be if I had to shovel by hand, provided I even finished today. A lot of that was dancing around in the cold trying to monitor traffic and stay out of detection range so it didn't just stop, but steps are steps. I feel like I accomplished everything I needed to. The driveway is, if nothing else, drivable; the strays are fed; nobody got turned into a smoothie despite the grate being off; and the grate came off in one go with my fingers holding out just long enough to get the 6 screws out. Overall successful, I think, even if it did all take multiple attempts to finally get to a state of completion.

Okay, so #Yarbo was able the rest of the driveway tonight, mostly, but there's a bit of a packed spot that needs additional attention that's probably a snow drift and Yarbo left a bit of a mess not overlapping for some reason. So I have a cleanup run scheduled for the morning because it's frackin' cold and shockingly humid out there and wind chill doesn't help. Not quite so bad since I found my gloves, but it did penetrate by the time Yarbo was done.

I mean it will probably still be frackin' cold and shockingly humid in the morning, but at least I'll have the light and be dry. Had to trudge through a lot of snow for the manual corrections and got myself wet and cold.

Things were going fairly well, but then traffic came along and I'm just going to wait a bit because a) my fingers are frozen, and 2) I feel like someone took a drive around the block and if I'm going to be stopping #Yarbo every time cars pass lest it decide to take that moment to fill a windshield, the last thing I need is to give them the satisfaction.

People often rubberneck when it's running; even the mailman did earlier today with a man walking his dog. I just waved at them. Yarbo is good for starting conversations, but if there's going to be a contingent looking for trouble, I really don't feel like having one with the cops.

This is, in part, my own fault for thinking I could consolidate the couple snowfalls because one wasn't all that bad, as well as misjudging how much snow from the street would pile up in the driveway rather than letting #Yarbo try to handle some of it ahead of time before the plows were liable to visit.

Frustrated. #Yarbo decided it was acceptable to throw snow toward the street, so I had to scramble to stop it, because that's not legal here. Ended up trying to refine the snow throw direction to include the other side in case it was stuck for choice, but I am not happy about that.

Well, I at least got to eat. But when I was drinking some of that limited edition V8 Chipotle flavor I coughed and sprayed it all over the counter and decided I was just done.

On the plus side, I was able to get enough of the worst of everything cleared and took the grating off, so Yarbo probably can handle the rest. And even if not, it won't be so bad to do it manually. But I am still rather annoyed that the chute doesn't have better range.

#Yarbo officially got stuck due to the plow leavings. I fixed it, of course. I may need to use my lunch break to have it handle the plow area first, then handle the rest.

So #Yarbo officially completed its first full run of the driveway for the year.

I have to say this: they REALLY improved its ability to recognize when it's hit something that's not going away. Actually got a specific message it was adjusting due to uneven terrain. That wasn't there last year.

It did 2 passes in about a half hour and went back to charge without a hitch.

In contrast, maybe I would only take 20 minutes to blow the snow if I were smart enough to get the dang thing started, or I could kill myself shoveling for 2-3 hours with breaks.

I cannot stress enough how good of an idea this was for me.

Yeah... #Yarbo really needed me to risk charging it tonight.

We're under a G3 geomagnetic storm right now, but that's going to be over before sunrise, I hope. But with temperatures plummeting into the negatives, I can't afford to have the battery freeze.

It's currently heating. Which is good, but I'll breathe easy when it starts charging.

A strange day indeed, having to choose between terrestrial and solar weather.

Edit:
It's charging.

So I just got jumpscared by #Yarbo while out feeding the strays. I had turned on the anti-freeze feature, which wiggles some of the parts every so often. This, apparently, makes a strange rhythmic scraping noise that I was not expecting. So kibble went flying when it happened behind me. XD

#Yarbo is officially together with no serious injuries!

I do have some nicks on my hands and I almost pulled something, but ended up just stretching it a wee bit.

Also I think I've developed a mild skin allergy to WD-40. This would surprise me more if Grandma hadn't been allergic to petroleum. She had to be very selective about her lotions or else her hands would be cracked and bleeding.

I am rewarding myself with lunch and then I'll check the damage outside and see if I need to attach the plow or if it's light enough to blow.