MC500 - optimal perimeter wire setup for complex garden

[Taikaviitta]

Hello,

sorry for the English language but my French is unfortunately not that good :)

I purchased and installed Robomow MC500 for my garden where the lawn area is about 400m2 and split to two zones. I first setup the "main zone" and as the mower performed very well there, I then added the "sub zone" - which is a more complex area with quite narrow pathways and big islands. Now there's been some problems and usually the robot stays in the sub zone if it goes there, meaning that it does not find its way back. For this I have a few questions:

1. When mowing the main zone and returning to base - if the robomow finds the perimeter wire so that narrow path to sub zone is on it's way, it will circle the whole sub zone on it's way back to base. Is this expected behaviour or have I setup the narrow path start incorrectly? I assumed it would not go to circle the sub zone when cutting the main zone to get back to the base.

2. What kind of perimeter wire setup would you recommend? Currently all islands are setup as normal islands but I was thinking to change the biggest islands on both main and sub zone so that they will become part of the perimeter. In Main zone the reason is that it leaves some grass uncut around the island. In sub zone the reason is that when returning to base, the robot is usually found circling the main island (even though I have setup the "island mode" to active in the app).

3. In sub zone, even though the width of the passage to narrow path is exactly 50cm, the robot sometimes circles around this part of the wire and does not enter the path when it tries to return to base (=goes to another circle around the sub zone). I've tried both "near wire follow" set to "off" and set to "on" with minimum values of 1. I also wonder that when there is possibility to set the "near wire follow" options to both main and sub zone, how does the robot know where it is when it circles both zones when returning to base?

Thanks for any input / help!

p.s. please note that in the attached image I already marked the two big island mentioned in question 2 as "follow wire" island although currently they are "normal" islands.

[img http://oi60.tinypic.com/11v417q.jpg]
[url http://oi61.tinypic.com/eheq84.jpg]

[bastoche]

hi, the first problem to help that the language, but the biggest is i think, no many people on this forum have a mc 500
i hope someone should help you ;)

[Taikaviitta]

[quote le 22/08/2015 à 22:12:08, bastoche a dit :]hi, the first problem to help that the language, but the biggest is i think, no many people on this forum have a mc 500
i hope someone should help you [img http://i.les-forums.com/ic/ic10.gif][/quote]

No problem, I've already gotten many useful tips from this forum, Google translate is quite handy...:)

Today I actually changed the wiring so that in the sub zone the big island in now part of the perimeter so it circles it in any case. This seems to have solved the major problem of robot not finding the way back to main zone. And thus hopefully most of the other problems as well.

I also assume that MC500 is quite similar to RC302 / RC304 / RC306 / TC150 / TC300 / TC500 / MC150 / MC300 / MC500 as far it comes to functioning as all share the same manual.

So any ideas you may have are still welcome of course, but I think the situation is now much better that earlier (which was the reason to post the questions) :)

[Erick33510]

Hello, let me try to help you
1/ it is absolutely normal
2 and 3/ the wires near your islands are not correctly setup. You should not have a Space between the wire going to the island and the wire coming from the Island . The 2 wires must be together. Like this your mower Will not circle around your Island when returning to the base.
Your issue may also be due to the fact that your near wire follow setup is activated .try to have it dis activated or reduce the distance. P003 , 4 and 5 in the setup menu .

[Taikaviitta]

Hi and thank you for the comments! :)

1. Ok, good to know. It seems that there is not much "wisdom" in the robot in what comes to finding the base station. But this is ok as long as it finds it...

2/3. Yes, I actually have set the islands up so that wires are together. But my plan was to separate them so that i) in sub zone the mower would not circle the island (with the separated wire setup it will circle it once, with wires together it circles it until the battery is drained) ii) in main zone the cutting result is not optimal (separated wire would make the mower to cut neatly around it once per every cutting cycle).

At the moment, the main zone island is still wired together so it is seen by Robomow as a normal island. But I changed the setup in sub zone like in the picture (separate wire) and it is now working quite nicely.

And correct, I also needed to disable the "near wire follow" completely so that return through the sub zone would work. It is a bit weird that the app let's one set the "near wire follow" separately to main and sub zone but robot does not know when it is in the sub zone when e.g. returning to base station (as confirmed by point 1)...:)