[ CASE STUDY ]
Solar-Powered Lawn Care with Smart Automation
The Solar-Powered Lawnmower is an innovative, self-sustaining landscaping solution designed to offer eco-friendly, quiet, and low-maintenance lawn care. By integrating solar charging, lithium-ion batteries, an automatic fertilizer spreader, and smart automation, this mower eliminates the need for fuel, excessive maintenance, and high noise levels. ONMOTIO took the project from a conceptual idea to a fully functional prototype, ready for crowdfunding and market validation.
Industry
Sustainable Design
Year
2022
Areas of Expertise
Sustainable Design•Solar Power•Smart Home•Prototyping
[ THE PRODUCT ]
A self-propelled mower that charges itself from the sun, monitors the ground it is cutting, and doses fertiliser as it goes. Silent, fuel-free, and built to be shown to backers.
The brief was a crowdfunding launch, which meant the prototype had to work in a field and photograph like a product.
[ HOW IT WORKS ]
One button on the handlebar panel sets the cutting height. A servo turns a short arm and a turnbuckle swings the front wheel on its pivot arm, while the rear axle follows in a curved slot on its own servo, so the deck rises or settles parallel to the lawn with the blade. The front arm also carries the drive motor, which keeps the gears in mesh at every height.
Traced from our overall dimensions drawing and the prototype CAD, September 2022. One scale throughout; detail A enlarged 2.5 times.
01 . Height adjustment
One button on the handlebar panel
It drives the servos at both axles
02 . Servo and link
MG996R servo, 60 mm arm
A 70 mm turnbuckle drives the axle arm
03 . Front axle arm
The wheel swings on a 38 mm arc
The drive motor rides on the arm, gears stay in mesh
04 . Rear curved slot
The rear axle runs in a curved slot
Same 38 mm arm, its own servo
05 . Cut height
The deck rises and settles level
The blade goes with it
Traced from our overall dimensions drawing and the prototype CAD, September 2022. One scale throughout; detail A enlarged 2.5 times.
[ ENERGY ]
A solar panel sits under the clear hood. Its charge controller passes what the panel collects to the batteries, and the batteries run everything that moves: the drive motors on the front wheels, the blade motor and the two height servos. Out in the sun, both happen at once.
A solar panel sits under the clear hood: it charges the batteries, and the batteries run everything that moves.
Parked in the sun: the panel charges the batteries through the controller.
Parked in the sun: the panel charges the batteries through the controller.
Photonix in plan, at one scale: the fairing, the clear hood and the solar zone under it traced from our fairing CAD of 21 September 2022, as on our renders and the painted prototype. The other parts are drawn from our photos of the built prototype, and the batteries feed the motors and servos as on our electric diagram of June 2022. A power path, not to scale.
[ BUILDING THE PROTOTYPE ]
The chassis plate came off the CNC on 5 September and the body frames three days later. The body was built the way a boat hull is: frames cut on the CNC, foam planked between them, then fiberglass, filler and paint. Fifteen weeks from the first frame to the prototype on the lawn.
[ INSIDE ]
Adding sensing to a mower is easy. Adding it to a machine that lives outdoors, gets wet, gets knocked, and has to stay cheap enough to crowdfund is the part that decides the architecture.
Drive and cut
Sense and dose
[ WHAT ONMOTIO DID ]
The project started upstream of the product, with market research and personas, because the question was not only what to build but who would fund it.
We took it through mechanical design and CAD, optimised the solar and battery system, specified the smart features, then built and field-tested a functional prototype and produced the renders and explainer animations for the campaign.
Feb 2021
Average lawn sizes in the most populous and highest-income US states showed that 30 to 45 minutes of running time covers most of them.
Feb 2021
From the personas came a brief in numbers: a cutting height of 0.5 to 3 inches and a handle adjusting from 32.9 to 44.4 inches.
Jul 2021
We laid out the chassis part by part, down to the servo, its mount and the horn that set the cutting height.
Nov 2021
The architecture study of November 2021 set the batteries low in the chassis and tried three places for the electronics under the clear shell.
2022
Before the body went on, the bare chassis was wired and run, with its battery, blade motor and electronics in place.
Jan 2023
Finished, painted and closed under its clear hood, the prototype went out on real grass, with the handlebar screens lit.
We started from the client's concept images, with no design data behind them. The preliminary analysis set out the problem and the vision, benchmarked eight cordless mowers on deck, speed, battery and price, and mapped the market to place Photonix as a self-propelled cordless mower for home lawns. Mowing time calculations across US states showed how long a charge had to last, and the brief built its endurance target on them.
We took it through mechanical design and CAD, optimised the solar and battery system, specified the smart features, then built and field-tested a functional prototype and produced the renders and explainer animations for the campaign.
Three calls that shaped it
Energy
On-board solar plus two battery packs
instead ofBattery only, charged from the mains
The panel adds deck area, weight and cost, and it will never charge the machine on its own. What it buys is the claim the whole product rests on: it runs without being plugged in.
Chassis
CNC machined, light, made in small runs
instead ofTooled parts sized for volume production
Unit cost stays high and the design is not yet ready for a factory. It is the right call for a machine that has to exist and be filmed before anyone has ordered one.
Scope
Sensing and fertiliser dosing in the first product
instead ofA simple solar mower, shipped sooner
Every sensor is another thing to seal, calibrate and support outdoors. It is also the difference between a mower with a panel and a product worth backing.
[ THE WORK ]
[ WHERE IT WENT ]
A fully functional prototype was delivered, taken from CAD through CNC to field testing, and the campaign assets were produced alongside it. Crowdfunding-ready means a machine that works and imagery that survives being looked at closely.
[ THE SAME TEAM ]
This project needed several disciplines that usually sit at several different suppliers. Doing them under one roof is what stops a good concept from arriving at a factory that cannot quote it.
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