Flymo Robotic Lawnmower 1200r

Ok, so here is a bit of a special request for help!

I snagged a bargain Flymo Robotic Lawnmower 1200r on Amazon prime day for £350, and I'm looking to see how I can get some visibility on whether it's actually cutting or not.

I have a spare Fibaro Universal Sensor which I could use and was hoping to re-purpose that and wire it in somehow.
One thought I had is that you can enable a power saver mode on the Flymo, which cuts the power to the boundary wire that runs around the edge of the garden when it's in it's charging station.
With a sensor wired in to the boundary wire then, I could see if the mower wasn't charging.
Or maybe there is a better way that I can attach a sensor to the mower itself to know if it's moving - or ideally both of the above. Then I could see if the mower should be cutting, but if it's sat still then I could pick up if it gets stuck somewhere (happens on rare occasions).

I can't find any mention of the voltage that runs through the boundary wire, so not sure how that would work. And of course, once the boundary wire loses power, then the sensor would lose power so I would guess it would need to be powered separately.

Any thoughts or suggestions gladly welcomed!

Hi the boundary wire do not have regular voltage, its som kind of radio transmitter i think.

I read of a guy that used a microswich with a long arm connected to a fibaro universal sensor so when the mower goes in to the charging station it will cloes the circit. Or a photocell would work.

/Martin


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Is it just that you want to monitor when it's out and about or do you want to be able to activate/dock it remotely too?

Also how amenable are you to uh.. soldering?

Also I suppose if you just want to know if it's docked or not.. how about just a simple magnetic reed switch wired into the fibaro universal sensor's digital inputs? As in just get some window sensors, screw or glue them in place so they're touching if the unit is docked?

Good point. Yeah it would be nice to know if it's docked or undocked. Second thing would be good to know if it gets stuck!

See that's where it gets more awkward. I was thinking of things like a relay to turn it on / off, but measuring if it's stuck.. perhaps some kind of accelerometer? What voltage is the battery in that thing?

Building on the ideas of others, you could put on a battery operated Z-Wave motion sensor that won't detract from the power but you would quite easily know when it was moving about. If for no other reason at least as a cheap proof-of-concept to see what needs improving.

Would a zwave motion detector work? Without any body heat to register motion surly it'd just report closed all the time?

I was thinking if there were a binary output accelerometer that could be read by his universal sensor that'd at least say if it wree in motion or not.

I did think that, I could glue a Fibaro motion sensor to the top. Then i'd have the option of using the vibration sensors or the motion sensors to trigger things.

I guess the vibration sensors I would have to have a schedule to switch off the 'Tamper' every few minutes (whilst it was cutting) and if the tamper didn't activate for over x minutes I could assume that it's stuck.
That would need to be combined with a contact at the charging dock so I could detect whether it was docked or not so as not to alert when it was stationary and charging.

Is there any other supported z-wave sensors that would work here except the fibaro?

Ah, so using the tamper.. good idea. However are those units water proof?

Pretty sure they're not! The aeon labs ones however....

Oh yes.. the Aeon Labs Multisensor 6... I wonder if every time someone mentions that on the forums a buzzer goes off at Matt & Jay's desks and they now have Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome from it.