(Date Correction - Due to an unforeseen issue, we have pushed the date back to the following weekend. Sorry for the confusion.)
Rover/Mower/Drone Folks!
Because of the success last year, we are having the second Ardurover “gathering” here on the farm. All interested in autonomous Mowers/Rovers/Boats/Drones, etc. are invited. The main goals being to meet, compared ideas/best practices and share experiences with putting these autonomous contraptions together.
We will have at least 6 working mowers on hand and everyone is encouraged to bring their own. We have ~100 acres of short hay fields to play with so room to roam, fly and explore is not an issue. Will have our on-site RTK (via NTRIP) active and available for use by all. (Also have a small pond on the property for any floating Rovers).
Logistics:
Church Point is a small town about 20 miles NW of Lafayette, LA with no motels. However, Lafayette is a large metropolitan area about 30 minutes away with many motels and a large, full service airport served by American, Delta and United and all major rental car companies.
We have a 2400’ grass airstrip onsite (71LA) and folks are welcome to fly-in. Please call before launching to confirm expected strip conditions. Bring your own tie-downs. KOPL and KLFT are both excellent hard surface options if we get serious rain.
.
RV’s are welcome onsite but please call for details.
If attending, please contact me so we can plan accordingly!
Physical Address – 1529 Beaugh St, Church Point, LA 70525
Contact: Steve Webre – "swebre@hotmail.com” or 337-349-8365
LOL! Would love to. However that implies a level of organization and professionalism we might not have achieved yet.
This is more of a working gathering here in the shop discussing and trading ideas/solutions, inspecting other machines and hopefully walking away with new ideas and some “best” practices. At least one large mower will have its maiden mission here, which is always interesting, with lots of brainpower and experience on hand to sort it out.
Hey Steve - I’m in! Can’t fly as my plane will be in the middle of a prebuy, but will drive from Austin on Friday. Staying in Lafayette, so will have a car if anyone needs a lift “into town”. Put me to work, and let me know if I need to bring anything!
@SJohnson - looking forward to meeting you in person!
Wow! Thanks @Swebre2023 for hosting an amazing Mowstock! The weather gods smiled on us for the most part, and the incredible mowers in the line up were each technical achievements on their own.
Sad to have missed it! Looks like it was a blast, and I’m glad the weather held out.
Here’s the project I offered to demo. It’s a Raspberry Pi served web app that smooths the pain of creating a fixed base installation, while providing a little more flexibility than Mission Planner, a TON more user friendliness than u-Center, and without the subscription based model of ESPRtk.
The idea is that you’ll connect a u-Blox base-station-capable GPS module to the Pi via USB, install the basic headless operating system and get network connectivity, then enter a single command line instruction to install the app.
Once installed, the app will provide a webpage that you can access on your local LAN/WiFi network, and it will give you the following options at a minimum:
Start/stop survey-in
Enter your own surveyed coordinates
Mimic Mission Planner’s settings
Override the Mission Planner style settings with custom options for each UART, including baud rate and message types
Save to flash
Reset to default
Reboot
Enable an NTRIP service to broadcast to RTK2Go
Enable a serial to network service (UDP/TCP) for local connectivity
My goal is to keep it compatible with the Pi Zero 2 W so that current draw is an absolute minimum, and the whole thing can be run indefinitely with a battery and small solar panel, if desired. I’m developing on a Pi 5, but that will not be an end-user hardware requirement.
Very rough draft screenshot that needs some refinement and is clearly missing some of the features I just described, but is functional and responsive:
Expect a longer blog post dedicated to the project in the coming weeks, describing how to set it up. I do have to step away from it for a couple of weeks to focus on real work (which is the reason I couldn’t attend the get together at Steve’s…boo…).
I’m curious to hear how they hold up over the long term. They sure are beasts, and for the price, you can’t go wrong unless there’s a flaw we haven’t discovered yet. I do think you should drive them in the 18-28V range, though, as they are slow to position when run at 12-14V.
I still have some on the bench awaiting a project someday.
Here is a picture of the mower lineup that I had on my phone. It was great fun and everyone had a good time. We all learned a lot from each other and got to meet the people we converse with on the Ardupilot website.
Plus it was fun to watch the grass inspectors led by @Swebre2023 come out and point out any missed grass that didn’t get mowed, Just a group of friends having fun!
Wow! Sincere “Thanks” everyone who made the trek to MowStock 2024. I think a lot of info was exchanged, and problems discussed/solved along with a lot of laughs. All the machines behaved themselves and several where fine-tuned a bit. It was interesting to see how these machines are being developed/modified as they rack up the working hours. I know some folks were scared off by the weather (I was concerned also…) but it was clear Saturday so most machines had a bit of running time which was great to see.
I personally had a blast. Learned a good bit and a few more tricks from the impressive brain trust in attendance. New friends were made along with old friendships and “online acquaintances” strengthened which, to be truthful, is a main goal of these gatherings. We have all gotten fairly adapt at solving problems either solo or with the help of folks on these threads. However, I think there is still something worthwhile to shaking a person’s hand and looking them in the eye for the first time.
So I’m calling it a success and looking forward to next year. All input is welcome. Onward!
