Robomower and SmartThings

Howdy,

I wanted to share a success story for using my Robomower with SmartThings.

I have a Robomower RL850. It’s expensive, but not so expensive that it comes with a docking station. So whenever it finishes, I need to go outside and bring it back in.

That’s the catch – I don’t know when it’s finished. It typically takes 1.5 - 3.5 hours to run, depending on the state of the battery and height of the grass. But it also occasionally gets stuck, something which I don’t typically notice for a few hours.

There’s also some days where I forget about it altogether.

One day I was reading through the list of SmartApps, and got the bright idea that the Robomower may not be all that different than the laundry, as far as SmartThings is concerned, as it’s just looking for vibration.

So I tried that – I bought the new SmartSense MultiSensor that can detect vibration, and I installed the Laundry Monitor SmartApp. I attached the MultiSensor on top of the Robomower, and had it begin mowing the lawn.

And wouldn’t you know it, the laundry sensor gladly tells SmartThings when the Robomower stops, as there’s no more vibration.

One of my initial concerns was that I wasn’t sure how the device would handle being outside, away from the SmartThings hub. There haven’t been any connectivity issues though.

I’ve tried it a few times over the last few weeks, it’s been working great!

Just thought I’d share – have a good one!
-Eric

4 Likes

Awesome! I just watched a few videos on the Robomower. Very cool. Expensive, but very cool for small yards.

Nice use of existing hardware and smartApps! Maybe even add a presence sensor to the mower. This way you can tell if someone has decided it was too expensive to buy their own and decided to borrow yours for an undisclosed amount of time. :smile:

I had a post last year where I thought it would be cool to have smartThings Control your mower. This way smartThings could open your garage, start the mower, and close the garage after the mower has exited the garage. Then the reverse would happen when it was done.

Very interesting. I have two robomowers. One uses the docking station and stays outside. That makes this use case difficult because I don’t think the ST sensors are waterproof. However if I remove the cover of my robomower I should be able to attach it to the underside of the cover and then replace it. Also I can see using an open and closed sensor on the docking station to know when it left the dock and when it returned. Lucky for me I have a rain sensor built into my robomower. However if you did not have that one could consider a humidity sensor to accomplish the same thing I would think.

Check this out to see if it might help:

I have had this same setup on my exposed gate for months now…works great!