Remote Control Riding Lawn Mower

I've seen a lot of remote control push mowers, but I haven't seen many RC riding mowers. So I decided to try to build one. It took a couple months to get everything worked out. But I finally got it done. The mower deck is 48 inches. It has two wheelchair motors powering the rear wheels. I had to adjust the gear ratio in order for the motors to carry that much weight up hill. I started with one linear actuator to raise the mower deck up and down, but it would not hold the weight of the deck in the up position. So I added a second one because I had it lying around. Now it will hold the deck up without having power applied. There are two group 29 marine batteries (not car batteries like I said in the video) powering everything. A Sabertooth 2x32 from Dimension Engineering controls the wheelchair motors. I used a BattleSwitch to control the headlights. To turn the mower deck on and off I used a PicoSwitch to activate a 440 amp 24 volt relay. I know the video is kind of long but I wanted to show part of the struggle in figuring out how to make everything work.

I painted everything with the John Deere color scheme to pay tribute to the man and company who helped build this country with a little sweat and ingenuity.

I built it because I enjoy working with my mind and my hands. I enjoy creating and building things. I enjoy solving problems. And, I enjoy finding new ways to use technology that a common person like myself can do in their garage. The Internet contains nearly all of human knowledge and it's ours free for the asking. I don't have a degree in engineering or a background in electronics. I found something I wanted to learn about, got on the Interwebs, and started Googling. On the surface, the internet is full of pop culture, biased news stories, bogus lists of amazing things you have to see, and silly viral videos that do nothing to further the common good. But dig a little deeper and a person can literally learn about anything for free. We have a responsibility to future generations to leave this world better than we found it. It would be a shame to have access to this vast wealth of human knowledge and do nothing with it. Imagine if people like Ben Franklin, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Edison, or George Washington Carver had access to the Internet, and what they could have accomplished. I am an average man with average intelligence, and would never put myself in the same category as these men. But I do have easy access to all of their successes and failures. We are all standing on the shoulders of giants. What we choose to do with that information is up to us. Are we going to post selfies and watch cat videos? Or are we going to take what we can from that knowledge base and try to do something good, something to further it. There are 7 billion people on this planet and nearly half of them have access to the internet. There is not a problem out there that we could not solve if we all just made a little effort in that direction. I am not solving any world problems with a remote control lawn mower. But, I am doing what I can with what I have that may inspire someone who has more to do more.

Update: here are the photos of the build process
https://goo.gl/photos/TmTQ7GNtEzSodCsMA

Видео Remote Control Riding Lawn Mower канала Mike Toombs