I personally don't have any depth perception (right eye is off in his own little world), so stereoscopic cameras would just be a waste of money for me. Thats why I was thinking a 3rd person view would be best (as high and far back as possible). Then it'll show most of the mower and whats around it.Electric Rain wrote:As far as cameras, I wanted something more than a webcam. I said stereoscopic because I would imagine it would give a much better viewing angle, and better depth perception. Something like this, maybe?
Reason why tracks aren't used: they are too wide. If you slap tracks on the sides of your mower, you increase the amount of grass you can't cut. It might be different with your idea of weed wacker heads. The only place I know of that you could get the right sized tracks is from snowblowers. I'm now thinking I'll have a motor for each wheel and have it skid steer.Electric Rain wrote:For steering... heh... I got a little crazy here. I haven't worked it all out yet, but I was thinking caterpillar tracks! Like a tank...I would think this would be harder to build (Where would I even get the tracks? I've looked... I don't know...) but easier to steer, and it will make the ride much smoother (thus a much steadier video feed). There must be a reason why this isn't practical... but what is it? That's what I'm trying to figure out right now.
Of course if I were going to do this and get this elaborate, all of the electronics would be done from scratch. No hacked up RC cars or anything like that.
The electronics don't necessarily have to be done from scratch, its more or less the same as a battle robot (battlebots, robot wars) except it'll weigh less than the heavy weights and not go as fast. The way I'm planning will be kind of hard, but I believe I've found a source for serial speed controllers. Only problem is they can't handle too much power.
Thats a pretty good idea, it would allow you to be more flexible on the size of your cutting area.Electric Rain wrote:I was thinking pretty crazy on the actual cutting of the lawn too. First of all, I want it all to be electric. I don't care how big of a lead-acid battery I'll need. I hate gas (except for the smell... we all like the smell
Could I get a low amperage motor controller and use something like MOSFET's to increase the amps that can be drawn instead of paying a ton for a high amperage controller?
And nice yard, bacteria.
) ride-on leaves uncut areas I have to weed-wack anyways, so I wouldn't be too concerned about getting in all nooks and crannies. The GPS module won't be used for exact positioning as much as heading and speed. The mower'll turn to the position data if it gets way, way off course.
It wouldn't be very much extra work to add manual control.
I want to do this from scratch. Like I prefer to do with all of my projects. Plus, I want a larger cover area. What am I gonna do, use 3 or 5 lawn mower blades? (I say 3 or 5 because one way or another, I have to stager blades so I make sure I don't miss any grass, since I can't put them right next to the each other for safety reasons.) That's crazy... and will probably take WAY too much power. Weed wacker cord breaks far too often, and I would need it at a specific length so it doesn't miss any grass or hit the other assemblies. Oh, and the way I see it, if we're talking about safety, 20 hacksaw blades spinning around at a high speed probably has less of a chance of amputating one of your limbs than 3 or 5 lawn mower blades spinning around at a high speed... don't you think? Although you'd get severely f'ed up either way if you were stupid enough to run yourself over with it. 
