Movember: How did Marvin the Mower go, maintaining our lawn while we were away in Europe…

…for two months? I’d like to say that he effortlessly mowed our 1500m2 lawn. But the reality wasn’t quite perfect.

On the plus side: from the other side of the world, I could use the Mammotion app to mow any zones of our lawn. I could have scheduled it, but didn’t. I occasionally watched from my iPhone, through the mower’s camera, to check the grass length and also general security. It did a great job of the areas that it mowed.

On the negatives: Marvin got stuck many times on the half buried round log next to the charging station. Wheels would go either side of the log, leaving Marvin floundering like a turtle, unable to touch the ground with the wheels. After returning, we “fixed” the problem by using an upturned table, and later just a block of wood. Similarly, he got stuck a few times on a raised edge (pictured).

There seems to be some recent software glitch, where the mower leaves an occasional strip of unmowed grass, one mower width from the zone edge. This became very noticeable after two months of growth. The “RTK” base station transmitter also got overgrown with the surrounding shrubbery, but still worked fine

Before we left for Europe, one of our neighbours, Anne, made the mistake of offering to check in on Marvin if he had any problems. I exploited her kind offer by messaging several times to say that Marvin got stuck. Each time, she kindly moved him off the log and restarted, so he could continue on. After we returned home, Marvin brought Anne some flowers (pictured), but sat outside in shame while we enjoyed a cuppa.