We will just use this thread to talk about all aspects of new mower builds and I expect the conversation to range beyond just the hardware. In building a mower you have to start somewhere so I have just picked the heart of the beast, the flight controller, to discuss on this post…
A big part of this is pouring over the Ardupilot documentation online. I tip my hat to all the extensive work many people have done to learn and document everything. It takes a while to go through all the information, but is very well done.
https://ardupilot.org/rover/docs/common-autopilots.html
I will try to resist pushing a single flight controller because many of them would work for this application. Many of the mowers you will see out there use the Orange Cubes and they have all the processing power and memory that the mower requires. One thing that makes the Orange Cube popular is the plug and play aspect of the device (you buy a cable set and plug things in). Some of the other ones like the Mateksys H743-Wing have just as much processing power and memory and they cost quite a bit less. The negative is that they are not packaged as nice and you start pretty much with a loaded board, putting connectors on it, and making your own cables. Making cables sounds scary, but in the end you have to understand exactly where every wire goes and what it does. These cables are small though and it does take some patience and practice to assemble them.
CubePilot Cube Orange/+
Mateksys H743-Wing
I currently use an Orange Cube but if I was a new builder I would consider the H743-Wing to save some money and get the same functionality.
I, and likely with help from others we will come up with pictures (or provide links to pictures) of some mower electronic setups.
Link to pictures of my mower electronics - KevinG's Autonomous zero-point turn Lawn Mower - #255 by Jordan_Keeney
@Yuri_Rage, @ktrussell, @Swebre, @Bdflies, @Christopher_Milner, @Jason_Miller