OverKill RC Lawn Mower

An RC platform built from an old electric wheelchair. Currently being used to mow my lawn.

matthewdtwo

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Description

My RC lawn mower built from an electric wheel chair base.

Details

The project started out with an old electric wheelchair from Craigslist - not a bad find for $75! The batteries and motor controller were shot, so the first version of it used an old gutted toy RC truck with no speed control that activated some relays. Full throttle or nothing, boy was that fun to drive indoors!

After some painful run ins with shins, a cardboard boat (plus the guy working on it), and managing to knock over a table with a 3D printer going, it was upgraded with a Dimension Engineering Sabertooth 2x25 and an RC receiver.

At that point, it was time to strap a lawn mower behind it and pull it through the yard.

The next upgrade came from the addition of two more motors and an additional speed controller. After adding the additional drive motors, it was time for some modification to the lawn mower for more precise mowing capabilities. I welded a pneumatic swiveling caster to the front and redid the mounting bracket so the mower gets pushed now instead of pulled.

Next attachment will be a snow blower, hopefully before winter.

Components

1 × RC Receiver Standard 2.4GHz receiver.
2 × Dimension Engineering Sabertooth 2x25 PWM Motor controler. Good for 25A continuous per channel at 24V. Regenerative braking and tons of configurable inputs available.
4 × Motors 24V Brushed DC gear motors.
2 × Batteries 12V Lead Acid 35Ah UB12350

Project Logs

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Mowbot version 0.3
matthewdtwo • 08/04/2015 at 03:50 • 0 comments

The motors have pairs for the front/rear sets have worn independently, and without an encoder system the frame was taking a bit of damage from wheel hop/skidding and it was fatiguing some of the joints quite a bit.
In order to keep a mostly contained platform, I rebuilt one of the axles to contain a pair of motors, batteries, and control box, and allow it to attach to the lawn mower into some steel tubing acting as a receiver.
This will free up two motors to let me work on the all-electric version while still being able to mow my lawn for the remainder of summer!
Testing out the 4WD
matthewdtwo • 07/06/2014 at 04:19 • 0 comments

Here's the bot in action
It can almost climb stairs too. I think bumping up to 12" or 14" tires might just make it happen.