Lonny

I've been captivated lately by robot mowers. I've written off unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) as much less interesting than drones, because they can't travel as freely and easily. They're much less common than drones, for this reason, I think. While you might have a DJI on your shelf for taking pictures, you're less likely to have a rover. Then I saw a friend's robot mower, and it changed my viewpoint a little bit. It's a platform for autonomy tinkering. It's less stressful and constrained by energy than a drone, and it could potentially have a job! I started poking around on eBay, and immediately saw countless tracked "RC Mowers" that I thought looked very cool. I toyed with the idea for a few months and eventually pulled the trigger when I saw one at a local auction. Enter: Lonny (the robot lawnmower).

The Mower

May 18, 2026

hello everyone and welcome to jackass, I bought one of these and I'm going to stuff an RTK into it and give a Pixhawk something responsible to do

Updates 1-2

May 18, 2026

update 1: remote controlled mower didn't come with a remote
update 2: the commies scraped the labels off the motor drivers

Update 3

May 18, 2026

motor drivers take in SBUS. I plugged an ESP into the SBUS and told Codex to start guessing.

guys it's such a good time to be a smug lazy jackass

Update 4

May 19, 2026

vibecoded an SBUS mixer to sanity check the controls. turns out it was actually pretty standard and easy to hand off to the Pixhawk.

Update 5

May 19, 2026

update 5: 🤠🤠

fought all afternoon with the remote firmware. plugging into the Pixhawk was a breeze. gps works. cheapo telemetry link works. I'm gonna upgrade the telemetry link tomorrow, and drive him to his new home and forget about him until the RTK comes.