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SALT LAKE CITY — Three brothers' quirky but useful creation is snagging praise from others.
Dan, Doug and David Leonard worked together to design and build a Google-powered remote control lawnmower in less than 24 hours as part of StartFEST's hackathon, ultimately claiming first place on Sept. 5. Since then, they've posted directions on Instructables so others can make their own autonomous lawn mowers.
"We wanted it to be so you could get everything at Home Depot and buy it off the shelf, so you could pretty much strap it together and go," Dan Leonard said.
The idea for the project came from Doug Leonard, who reportedly hates mowing his lawn and thought it would be cool to have a remote-controlled lawnmower. Dan Leonard said StartFEST provided the perfect opportunity to put the idea to the test.
Pretty much anyone could mow the lawn that we have (the lawnmower) sitting on as long as it has an Internet connection and is up and running.
–Dan Leonard, inventor
To create the autonomous lawnmower, the brothers used an electric lawnmower as the base and added items like two cordless hammer drills, a Bluetooth enabled compact radio and a Raspberry Pi microcomputer. They removed the lawnmower's handle and replaced all four of its wheels, attaching the replacement wheels to the cordless drills.
The drills, in turn, were connected to the Raspberry Pi computer, which was programmed to send power to whichever drill corresponded to the direction the operator wanted the lawnmower to move. For the competition, the brothers created a chatroom on Twitch and gave users the ability to send commands to the lawnmower.
"Pretty much anyone could mow the lawn that we have (the lawnmower) sitting on as long as it has an Internet connection and is up and running," Dan Leonard said.
While the lawnmower is operational, the brothers are still working to perfect their creation. Dan Leonard said he's already tweaked some of the directions on Instructables, which have been viewed more than 2,000 times so far. And since two of the brothers are IOS developers, they are hoping to create an application that controls the lawnmower instead of Twitch.
"The reservation that we have is we don't know how to prevent Doug's flowers from being cut off by people on the Internet," he said. "We're trying to figure that out before we go live again with it, but it is pretty much fully functional."
This isn't the first project the Leonard brothers have tackled together. Dan Leonard said they have always been "tinkerers." One of the most notable creations from their high school years was a 20-foot trebuchet, which they built at the pumpkin patch where they worked as a new attraction. They used it to launch rotten pumpkins 70 feet down a field so they would hit a junker car to cause "maximum" damage.
Dan Leonard's current project involves a Barbie Power Wheels car. He said he "wasn't very impressed" with the motor in the small car so he replaced it with a gas-powered motor. Now he's working on building a new frame for the vehicle with the goal of making it into a "life-size mini remote control car." Once he finishes, he plans to share the directions for that project on Instructables as well.
