I realized that my scrounged adapters came in different two different amperage values, one 500mA and one 1A. I knew my voltage regulator was rated for 1A, and had thought that might be the problem (if you can’t get enough current then you can’t get enough power as Power = Voltage * Current). I switched the transmitter to the 1A AC adapter and powered the camera from Betsie and everything worked great again.

This is when I started researching voltage regulators and came across switching regulators. Similar concept, looks about the same from outside the IC, but inside it’s all different. How it’s different goes beyond this Mech. E’s interest/experience level, but the end result is that it’s a lot more efficient. In a linear voltage regulator the voltage dropped is lost as heat. This really only works when you’re at low powers or small voltage drops. No, I didn’t do the calculation to figure out how much I’m wasting, but I did burn my fingers last time so I know there’s a lot of heat being wasted. The switching regulator is rated for 80% efficiency. Since I know I need more power, it seemed like a good way to go.

Here’s the part I ordered: http://octopart.com/info/Diodes+Inc./AP1512A-12K5L-13

It arrived today, so I might get a chance to put things together.

I’m still operating without a soldering iron and without my own voltmeter so I probably won’t get anything finished tonight. I need to fix this!

Of course it hadn’t rained for over 6 weeks and there wasn’t really much need to mow the lawn either.

Since then we have gotten a bit of rain (hurricane season), and the leaves will start falling soon.

I still love the idea of keeping Lawnbott Live as a permanent fixture. Twittering Betsie’s schedule so her fans can come and watch her mow the lawn. And so I have acquired a new camera. I will write more about it soon and I expect you to be able to See how well it is working out in the near future. Just as soon as it stops raining.

It wasn’t a hard project, I just added a new piece of wire along the house side of the sidewalk, across at a crack, and back up the street side of the sidewalk to connect to the old wire. This gave me some slack to fix the area around that troublesome bush too.

So now the area between the sidewalk and the street is a new zone.

I’ve let her return to her automatic schedule. At 95% mowed Betsie will go home and schedule herself to return to mowing the next day (24 hours + waiting until the next scheduled window). I’m curious if it ever waits more than 24 hours to go back out? Some features of the lawnbott software are never noticed because us users aren’t patient enough to just let it do it’s thing (or it gets stuck and resets the automation). The rain sensor is an example. Apparently the lawnbott will unpause itself a certain time after quitting for Rain, but I’ve never seen that happen either, I always go out and unpause it.

I’ve been out of town, so presently we are at almost 48 hours of unassisted mowing. It’s fun to watch the cam from Denver! If you like it, submit it to Digg.

The UStream.TV setup should work better than trying to get my own streaming server working. Still, I’d say this setup is currently in ‘beta testing’ mode, so leave a note if you see anything odd…

Betsie finished by the way! The lawn looks great!

………….

Yeah! The weeds were knee high on Friday night when I got home and found the package from KA.

I set Betsie to charging. When she was ready (or maybe before since I am impatient) she came out, did a spiral, crossed the yard, and went home. Total time, less than 10 minutes!

I began to fear for the battery. However, she was cutting better than ever and not getting stuck in the tall weeds. So I decided not to worry yet.

I’m not sure if it was the new blade, the new software, or maybe the fact that my grass isn’t too thick… but I have never seen a lawnbott do so well in such overgrown grass. I’m pretty the fact that the grass wasn’t too thick helped a lot.

I’m going to try over-seeding when I get home next week (I have a bag of seed that the previous owners of our house left, so might as well use it). Betsie keeps things a bit shorter than I’d like, and that lets the weeds come in more. Anyone have advice about dealing with that?

If you are seeing this in your feed, come visit the site to see the cam.

I let her charge for about 20 minutes and then got impatient. That was when I realized the charger was on the wrong voltage setting. I switched it, waited 5 more minutes and then sent her out. She made this lovely spiral, crossed the yard to the driveway and must have been cruising because she slipped out of bounds and stopped. I turned her around but she said Low Battery so I sent her home.