We've been putting a massive amount of
planning and work into turning the house
behind me into the tech house of dreams
for our hypothetical guy, Gee. But today
is not about Gee, it's about me. With
the interior looking like this right
now, it's going to be our main focus, at
least until the fall. So, I need some
kind of low-maintenance or ideally
zero-maintenance solution to handle some
of the exterior [music] grooming. That
is where Mammotion comes in. They
sponsored this video and sent over their
Luba 3, giving us the idea of setting up
a completely [music] automated
start-to-finish solution. I'm talking
the garage door opens on its own, the
lawnmower goes out, does its thing,
>> [music]
>> goes back in, and it closes back up.
Nobody touches it. Can we pull this off?
Sure hope so.
Our goal is to set up a home automation
system that, in tune with our mowing
schedule, is going to open up the garage
so the Luba 3 can make its way out,
maintain the lawn, and then, once it's
finished, come inside, after which the
garage will automatically close. SOUNDS
SIMPLE ENOUGH. OI!
BUT OUR 40-year-old garage door opener
isn't exactly smart home ready. So,
that's our first task, and I'm going to
accomplish that with some help from one
of our new writers, Michael, who brought
our home assistant setup for this
automation. I also brought my Tailwind
IQ3, which is going to control our dumb
garage door opener. Realistically, we
could have used a simple relay like you
set up at your house, but IQ3 includes a
door sensor, isn't ridiculously
expensive, and it has a good reputation
for low latency and high reliability.
Hopefully, it also has a reputation for
being simple, because garage doors are
one of those home improvement things
that I just uh
just pay a pro to do. So, step one is
we're going to mount one side of the
door sensor right here. It's got this
kind of cute little like ratcheting
thing that you put in as much as you can
and then Oh, wow. That's actually on
there pretty good. Then we just tighten
with a wrench and uh wow, that is not
going anywhere. Now we got to do the
other side. What's the best way to close
this now?
Uh we need power. Yeah, I'll plug it in.
Well, there's no power in the power
>> Oh, right, right, right, right, right,
the whole panel's disconnected. You know
what? No, probably easier to just do
this and then just close it. There we
go. Oh, boy. Little keep going, keep
going.
This is the moment when we find out.
Yay, I did. I put it somewhere where
there's not going to be something in the
way.
Nice. We missed some stuff on the
checklist of things we need for this.
So, we don't have our alcohol or rags,
but
hand sanitizer and uh the inside of your
shirt will do in a pinch.
Now, in a perfect world, I would
actually probably screw this in, but I
think our plan in the longer term is
actually to make this the workshop side
of the garage and have the other side be
the car side. So, this is a permanentary
temperant
>> [music]
>> install. So, I'm going to use the
double-sided tape. The alignment on this
doesn't need to be crazy close, but it
does need to be pretty close. Right
around there should do just nicely.
The polarity doesn't matter for these
wires, so all we got to do is twist them
together, cap them off either with a
marrette or uh crimp or whatever works
for you. They're not high voltage wires.
Then the kit includes a nice little
variety of cable management clips to get
this back up to the [music] opener.
Man, did I just say that these clips
were really handy? Because I take it
back.
I
cleaned that spot off perfect and stuck
it It's This adhesive sucks. We're going
for the zip ties.
This is pretty DIY friendly. Obviously,
you could put more time into the cable
management if you really wanted to, but
that took me about 7 minutes and I'd say
it's acceptable. Now all we've got to do
is strip two of these ends and then
we're going to put them into our
Tailwind hub here into door one sensor
and then common. So that's just the the
ground right next to it. Then to connect
this to the garage door opener, we flip
around to the other side and we take
this little included pigtail and we plug
into garage door one dry contact and
then this goes into the back where the
dry contact switch would normally be
activated. Now all that's left is
plugging into power and syncing up the
app. All right. Thank you, sir. We do
not have power here at the house, but we
do have a Jackery. So
>> [music]
>> this should work. Hey, look at it go.
Okay, big moment.
All right, that's good. That's the
warning. Sophisticated.
Nice.
Now on our side, you can see closed. Now
we click it again.
Opening and open. And it gets that from
the sensor data. Okay. Now we just have
to start setting up the lawn mower. You
know, depending how things go, we may
end up keeping the Tailwind as part of
the final installation for Ge it
supports all kinds of automations
including things like opening up the
garage door automatically when you turn
onto your street. In fact, I'd even be
pretty interested in something like
that. But for now, let's take a closer
look at the Luba 3 which should have
even less assembly than last time now
that there's no RTK antenna or extra
wires required on the outside. For the
base station, the idea is to have it
near if the door leaving enough space
around it for obstacle avoidance and
then obviously having it close enough to
our Jackery that it's going to be able
to charge up our Luba. Did I say
Jackery? Sorry, I meant two of these
Blue Yeti AC300s. Because we're going to
leave this unattended for long periods
of time and we want to be able to handle
the 210 watt fast charging for the Luba.
This is going to give us plenty of
capacity for that. Now let's have a look
at the mower itself. This is the 5000 H
model and the H indicates that the blade
has a higher range for the blade height
for maintaining a longer length if
you're into that sort of thing. And wow,
they
really have cut down on the assembly for
this thing. Basically, all we got to do
is plug in this front spring-loaded
pressure bar and
that way it's going to know if it
accidentally rams into anything. Then on
the bottom, we screw on these safety
bumpers.
As you can see, this unit isn't exactly
clean. Uh that's because we've already
done some validation to make sure that
it's going to be suitable for our use
case. It's more than suitable. It's
actually kind of overkill. This thing is
rated to do like I think a 5400 square
foot lawn or something like that between
charges. Ours is a fair bit smaller than
that, but that doesn't mean that we
can't use some of its more advanced
features. And a big one is its ability
to very accurately map out your lawn, go
about its business, and return to home
base.
Two more things. We got to put this
little key in the back or it will not do
anything. And then I actually forgot to
tighten on the bumper.
>> [snorts]
>> There we go. Let's throw it on the base
station now.
Excellent. Hey, charging indicator
already, just like that. Now the rest of
the setup is going to be through the
app. Once you hit add lawnmower in the
app, it should automatically detect
[music] a lawnmower through Bluetooth.
And I helped. Now the RTK reference
station, we don't need that anymore
because every single E motion unit comes
bundled with a 4G SIM card and free
service. It should just work throughout
Europe and North America. And that's
just for positioning, correct? That's
just for positioning. Cool. So now you
don't need any exterior RTK sensors and
you can just rely on its own SIM card,
Bluetooth, and your Wi-Fi connectivity.
Now that that's detected, the next thing
we have to do is make sure that it is
using that iNavi service. So we're going
to go over to our RTK settings. Our
signal is good. For positioning mode,
we're going to click on that and hit
iNavi net RTK. And now it should just
have net RTK set up. Okay. Now we have
to set up our map, but first we need to
open up the garage.
>> Oh, right. Which we can do with our home
assistant automation.
Huzzah! Now to create a map. No toys,
wires, branches, sticks, etc. No
problem. Start mapping. I think I'm
going to do manual mapping cuz things
are a little cluttered right now. All
right, we select
go to lawn,
forward,
left.
I'm going to try to do this as much like
I would want it to do as possible. Don't
mind me, I'm just taking my lawnmower
for a walk.
In case of mistakes, hold the joystick
reverse button. Robot will reverse along
its previous route. Oh, cute. Okay.
It's worth noting that you don't have to
draw the most perfect outline in the
world. I'm just being a bit of a
perfectionist right now. And we're back
to the start. My lawn has been mapped
successfully. Now it is worth noting
that I was obviously taking it for a
walk, but as I was doing that, it was
using lidar and computer vision in order
to make a 3D map of the space. So
theoretically, I can add another lawn,
but we're not actually planning to
upkeep the back because we don't care
about that. So we're just going to do
the front. So then I'm good to go. Start
mowing, right? Not quite. Before we do
that, I just want to go over here to
create and I'm going to create a no-go
zone because the last thing I want is
this thing trying to mow these.
That probably wouldn't go too well for
the blades.
Mapping successful.
Nice. With the grass this high and this
thick in some places, we don't want to
try to go super short. So that's where
having that really nice
>> [music]
>> range for the mowing height is going to
come in handy for us. I'm thinking maybe
we go for like 8 cm. Just give it a Give
it a little trim. You know what I'm
saying? And start. Here it goes.
You can really see with how our neighbor
obviously takes care of his place that
it was important for this to not look
like this all the time.
Look at her go, bud.
She's ripping, bud.
You know, tracking the progress here.
Like, it's freaking accurate, hey? Like,
it's really going exactly where I told
it, for better or for worse.
With the lawn mapped and the mower back
in its dock, all that's left is setting
up our Home Assistant automation. Right
now, we're going to trigger the
automation manually, but once we can see
that the mower can consistently do its
job, then we'll set a schedule. We're
going to have our first event happen in
parallel with the mower being sent out
to mow and the garage door opening up.
Once the mower has reached the lawn, the
garage door will be triggered to close,
and once it has a progress of at least
95% or a state of returning back to the
dock, then the garage will open back up
waiting for the mower's return. Once the
mower is back in its base station, the
garage door will close, and that'll be
the end of the automation. So, in
theory, no one should have to touch it.
And now, the rest is just going to be up
to Linus.
I got to say, it's pretty cool seeing it
power through some of those really thick
patches. You might have noticed we don't
have any slopes on our lawn, but the
Luba can also use that power with its
four independently driven motors to
handle just about any terrain, including
slopes up to 38° or an 80% grade. Now,
the only question is, will our
automations run without manual
intervention? And if this trail cam
footage is anything to go by, the answer
is yes. But what's this? On day three,
we added a couple of obstacles to the
lawn to see how Mammotion's AI obstacle
avoidance handles them. Will it? Won't
it? Will it?
Success.
Mammotion's detection can pick up over
300 different common lawn obstacles. And
if one of your concerns is things that
are alive on your lawn, they've got a
night mode that's designed to detect
animals like hedgehogs to hopefully, uh,
>> [clears throat]
>> help save them from a very uncomfortable
fate. Also, you can just avoid running
your Luba at night.
With everything automated to the point
where I can completely ignore it, all
we've got to do is adjust our schedule.
I think once a week should be enough.
Might actually want to adjust the lower
height as well. That first cut did not
bring it short enough.
Good call. Dropping the blade to the
lowest setting might have been a bit
aggressive, but we tackled the full 95
square meter lawn in under 40 minutes.
And with our schedule dialed in, our
setup is looking set and forget for the
rest of the summer.
Massive thanks to our sponsor Mammotion.
You guys can check out the Luba 3 at the
link in the video description. Uh don't
judge the job behind me too much yet.
It's not even finished its first run. I
just I just shot this outro on the first
day.