The Core

>review

I knew there was a catch in there somewhere. 

Astronomers or not I'm interested in the iRobot version when it comes out. Or the Lawnbott when the price war starts.

In 2007 I paid about $$600 for an electric lawn mower, a "Neuton" which they advertised on TV.  Having a removable battery was a big deal.  About 2012 I bought a Black and Decker battery electric mower for around $450. At either time I could have bought a cheap gas mower for $100 which may outlast either electric with a little care.

>>sweet spot

$900 - 1800. If it has easy setup and just works.  I don't want to be rescuing the mow bot every couple of days.  It's not the work it's having to remember to check on the darn thing.   

I'm bad at prices (and buying mowers apparently) so I could be way off. What's you guess.

Next up: robot snow shoveler that can do steps!

Here ya go, Gurtie...  (seems kind of puny, though. emphasis mine)

"The mower will return home when it needs to charge itself up. In between these comings and goings it cuts the grass, zigzagging around in a random pattern. It cuts a narrow swathe — 6in wide — and on my lawn of 100 square metres seemed to need to re-charge itself every 40 minutes (each charge takes an hour). In total it took TWO DAYS to cut."

Flymo 1200R, £1,000, flymo.com/uk, Argos, Homebase, Tesco and other outlets

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3044379/Why-gardener-needs-flame-thrower-robotic-lawnmowers-weed-destroying-flame-throwers-Tom-Rawstorne-puts-test.html

>> took TWO DAYS to cut

heh. OK so we have about 2000 m/2 and that's  before you start factoring in it getting caught in some type of loop behind the veg patches or a badger uprooting the wiring and sending if off to mow the fiield...

I think I might wait a while. I also have horrible visions of coming home to find a bald chicken looking horribly confused in the middle of the lawn

>> perimeter wire

our two long boundaries are pretty open, one of the short ones is an 8 ft sheer drop and the other has a gate which doesn't latch properly - I'm thinking  it would be as cheap to buy and fence a goat as one of these things. 

>grass grows right up to the house foundation

That's another problem with most/all? of the designs to date, they leave a 3 inch edge unmowed.

If the wheels are outboard of the mowing deck, there's going to be an edging problem.

A couple of years ago, maybe here at th3core, I broached the idea of using some sort of stake system to use gps to triangulate & navigate the yard rather than perimeter wires.  Of course, I didn't think about frequency restrictions.  With current cheap tech, I think even the stake system is crude.  You could easily teach a bot now and store the data onboard.  Just put smartphone guts on it, then press record and drag it around. Maybe drop a few magnetic position markers so it could cross-check its positioning while mowing.  And the setup needs some sort of rfid fairy dust that you could mark perimeters with. Another dust would mark direct trails back to the charger, etc.

<added>
And another pink, glittery dust for Gurtie's chickens