Mower error "outside working area" :: "En dehors zone de tonte"

[Bo]

Hello,

I have a Husqvarna 230ACX. Since a few weeks it stops working about 10 times per day at the edge of my lawn with the message "outside working area".
The first time I cleaned the bot entirely, opened it up and cleaned both loop-sensors at the front and the back and even swapped them around to see what the issue was. Then the problem was fixed.
But now it came back again a few days ago.

Did anyone have the same issue? I'm curious how it was fixed so I don't have to take it back into the shop as they charge me a LOT of money every time and my mower is not a very happy one, it broke down so many times already.

Thanks a lot,

Bo

[Raygrass]

Hi Bo,
Can you give us more details about your mower? How old is it ? how many hours on the counter?how many square meters is your garden?Is your garden sloping?From which country are you and so on.
I suspect de rear tires to be worn and with the wet weather we have now, your mower can not stop on time.

[Bo]

Hello Raygrass,

Thanks for your reply.
Mower details:
Husqvarna 230 ACX CD version 2.80
Bought in august 2012

It has 4547 hours on the counter but maybe it should be more because I replaced the main print two years back.
The garden has about 1200 meters of gras and it is not sloping and is in The Netherlands.
The rear tires are pretty good and have a lot of profile still. We have lots of sand under the garden so the lawn is not that wet.

I have just set the operating speed to reduced to test if it solves the problem of slipping but within 5 minutes it was stuck again.
Also the "drive past wire" setting is set to 50cm. If I set it to 25 or less, the problem gets worse.

What I also tried is disabling the stop button, factory reset and reset the pin code to reset the loop signal, nothing worked so far.


Maybe not relevant but just to mention it, I have had a LOT of issues with this mower.
- I had to replace the main print as it was completely dead 2 years back.
- An antenna-cable from the charge station was broken so I had to replace the ground plate.
- A rear wheel fell off once and because it kept driving around, the thread of the drive-shaft got messed up so I had to bolted the wheel directly on the aluminum driveshaft plate
- The plastic cover is completely cracked from all the bumping into things, so I glued it all back together and added a bumper around the front to keep it from breaking again
- The charge-cable got rusty causing it to sprak when charging which burned and melted the front of the cover a bit.
It's become a bit of a DIY machine now because the replacement parts are so expensive. A new cover for instance is 350 euro :-(

Thanks

[JPMalef]

[quote ] Also the "drive past wire" setting is set to 50cm. If I set it to 25 or less, the problem gets worse. [/quote]This seems to indicate that wheels engines have difficulties to stop the mower "on time".
What about your batteries ? How old are they ?

[Bo]

The batteries are still the ones that I initially bought so they are 4 years old.
Also, what I just noticed is that efficiency is 1% and searching 2%.
Isn't that extremely low? Fault, no is 258

Thanks

[JPMalef]

Low efficiency is a bug (wrong calculation).

To measure the actual remaining capacity, just make 3 cutting cycle in Manual mode, then report to us all parameters found in the "battery history".

[Bo]

I cannot really make any cycles at this point. It is constantly stuck. I have to run out every 5 minutes to restart it.
It also does another weird since recently. When it hits an object (without a fence-wire) pretty straight, it gets stuck there without an error.
It hits the object, then the rotorblade stops spinning.
After a few seconds the rotorblade restarts, it moves forward but of course it immediately hits the same object again.
It continues to do this sometimes for half an hour before it frees itself.
I made a quick video of it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/chcykxq07a18b6n/Automower%20on%20crack.mp4?dl=1

Any idea what this might be? Maybe the same cause?

[JPMalef]

Electronic is counting on the right level of electricity.

Electricity is stored in battery.

When battery is dead, electronic don't get the right level of electricity.

Electronic don't behave as expected _o_

[Raygrass]

Try to disable the "Stop" button ."Danyspeed" had exactly the same problem:[url http://automower-fans.les-forums.com/topic/3171/goto/36778/?search=/message/search/%3Fq=soul%E8vement#m36778]

[Bo]

I thought I already tried disabling the Stop button but turns out I switched the mower off after it so it was reset.
After reading the old thread as recommended by Raygrass I tried it again and that was the issue. It has been happy all morning!
I'll buy a new stop button and cable and we're good to go.
Thanks a lot for all the help everyone!

[LOUISXIV]

Fine that you could find out that it is the microswitch operated by the stop button. But anyhow, considering the surface of 1200 m2 or the 4547 operating hours I would suggest that you check also the battery, which is still the original.

The correct way is the one described briefly by JPMalef above. But you get already a rough information about the batterys capacity if you look at the mowing time in automatic mode. For the new twin-battery of the 230 it is between 1.5-2 hours, depending of the power required by the cutting motor. The charging time is always roughly half of it. If these times have decreased to about half, you should think to replace the battery.

LOUISXIV

[Bo]

Ok, I will look into that, thanks!