Having the automower for the last month or so and actually being pleased with it, I needed to experiment with it. I was able to download the Husqvarna Automower application which gave me a lot of control on the mover. I was able to start/stop, set a schedule, adjust the grass height of the mover amongst other settings all at in the palm of my hands.

This was a good start for sure, but I wanted automations. So looked into IFTTT to see what they offer. I saw that the mower is integrated with IFTTT and have the following triggers and actions.

Which meant that if something happens (triggers) then I can make the mower do things (action). Then I had to come up with what I really wanted it to do:

  1. When it is raining, I wanted the automower to park automatically
  2. When something goes wrong with the automower, I wanted Dad and I to know so that we can go and investigate it.
  3. When we have a people over and we know that they are on going to be on the lawn, I don’t want the mower to come out to cut the grass.

Action 1:

This was simple, I needed to check the local weather and if it is raining, then park the lawn mower. It was easy enough for me to create it using IFTTT

Action 2:

Oh this one was fun, I wanted Dad to get an SMS while me a notification on IFTTT so wrote up the following:

Action 3:

This one was tricky. Knowing Elma and I, we normally place all events in our calendar. So the routine would have to check our calendar and if there is a “lawn event” then tell the mower to park. Before coding something, I always look around a bit and found out that Husqvarna already had this. If there is an event in my calendar starting with “park” the automower will just park itself.

Now this made automating the mower a bit easier and I did not have to deal with keeping an eye on it anymore.. Next step is to figure out a way how to make it carve out designs on the lawn.