Welcome to our website. My name is John Loghry, I have been tinkering with things since I was just a little kid. Many of my projects, ended up getting cheers from the neighborhood kids. But, not the kind of cheers you may think of. This would be cheers of seeing smoke come out, maybe a little bit of fire and strange noises. 

 I still occasionally entertain my neighbors with all the above, but recently I have been entertaining them with my latest project. My latest project is what I will call;

THE ALMOST AUTONOMOUS LAWNMOWER

The almost Autonomous Lawnmower was developed because I am getting up in age, and I have almost an acre of property. My wife doesn't like the riding lawnmower which we have. The problem solver in me, came out. So, how am I going to make sure the yard is taken care of, when I get too old to do this?  I began searching for solutions and I never really seen anything that would work for me. I began thinking of a way to do this, and after just over a year, I have the perfect solution.  I will walk you through the process of building this thing, the best I can.  

 The first version, was basically an old 16" push mower that I put a couple motors on to drive it. it still had the gas motor for the blades. The very first time I took this out to see if this would work, was not event less. with the gas mower mowing away the grass, I steered it with a remote control I had purchased and away it went, it was so cool to see it going across my yard, I loved it. You really can't believe that feeling unless you have done something on your own like that. Well my enjoyment ended pretty quickly as I found out it wasn't as easy to steer and there was no kill switch on it at that time. the next thing I know, it was trying to crawl up a street sign. with it up on its hind wheels, the tires spinning and the mower bouncing up and down trying to climb up the street sign, then add into the mix, the gas motor was pouring oil into the engine and so, it began smoking pretty bad. Again, with no kill switch, the only thing that helped was the batteries weren't strapped down and they fell out. this stopped the mower from bouncing around, allowing me to come up and hit the kill switch on the gas engine.  I will tell you, I have never had a bad experience where there were no people around to witness it. So, yes the neighbors seen everything. As embarrassing as it was.   

Here is a pic of the infamous accident (above) and below is a video of it actually going somewhere and mowing. Very exciting it was.

so, the next step was to get rid of the gas engine. which wasn't too bad, I just added a 24 volt 25 amp motor. This was finished in October, so, guess what I had to do with this?

I discovered early on that the location of the batteries were making the lawnmower unstable. I revamped the whole thing and put the batteries more centered, and enclosed the motors.

so, the next step was to get an on-board camera and to get it working correctly. After I put the webcam on , I made some design changes. 

In this next upgrade, I synced the webcam with my wifi, computer, tablet and smartphone so, I could watch what I was doing while inside out of the heat of the outdoors.

Here, I am mowing up and down a 30 degree yard, with no problems

I have some fine tuning to do to this, however, you can see, everyone is going to want one of these things. Imagine if you will, many of you who live in a hot climate, will really enjoy, sitting inside with an ice cold one, mowing your yard and even having some fun with it. Believe me, when I tell you the looks you will get from people seeing this mower going across your lawn with no one pushing it. I can tell you from experience, I have had people stop right in the middle of the street in shock.

 Also, what about those who are handicapped, or even scared of mowing the yard. Most young people I know, love video games. I believe you will have people wanting to mow your yard. I believe there will be things we can visually add to the streaming video, like the poke man craze. run over a poke man and get so many points. sounds like fun.

 Also, with the video, as you seen in my previous YouTube video, there are settings for the webcam, including you being able to record the video of you mowing the yard and emailing it to your dad as proof that you mowed the yard today.

I have been testing GPS on this but as of yet, it isn't accurate enough to be safely used. I have also been testing 3 axis system which is much more accurate. This is still in the infancy stages as the biggest drawback to it, would be line of site axis. With this in mind you would have to have them setup in several strategic locations. 

I am also using VR googles. This allows you to walk around, lay down, what ever position you wish to view the live on-board streaming video.

 You also can do this over a tablet, or a smartphone. I am currently working on an app for the phone, which should make things easier all the way around.

I also am trying to get this to work over cell signal. I have already had some success, however for some reason the video doesn't seem to be as clear as it should be. I confident it must just be a setting issue.  Once I am able to do that to my satisfaction, this will make it possible to mow your yard from anywhere in the world as long as you have access to cell signal or wifi.

I recently added a wheel barrow attachment to my lawnmower and removed the mower deck. This makes for a very useful wheel barrow. Now it will remotely move and dump all at your hands.

Beggars night 2020 will be so different and I knew we needed to do things a bit different this year. I wanted the neighborhood kids to have fun no matter what. So, I added a skeleton to this lawnmower and removed the mowing deck. Look at the video below to see how it turned out.

This was just a spoof about my biggest worry using the mindwave mobile to control my remote control lawnmower. 

My wife bought an old horse buggy and if you know me by now, I couldn't leave it alone, check this out!

Below is a list of those who believe in me and the Almost Autonomous Lawnmower and have pledged some of their hard earned money to help me. I won't forget you. I will be happy to put your name here too.

I will also send out postcards to all who pledge, the postcard will be that of "Al and AAL"  (See pic below)

 -  Thank you, John Loghry

1. Jeanne Rouse           Des Moines, Iowa

2. Jessica Loghry         Des Moines, Iowa

3. Mike Daspit              Des Moines, Iowa

4. Jeff Adamson         Ankeny, Iowa

5. Johnny Loghry       Des Moines, Iowa

I want to let my friends who work on auto bots, raspberry pi's, and arduino Uno's  or anything else about this place I found. I had to have some work done on my raspberry pi, and I couldn't find anyone who even wanted to try. I went to "We Fix it Repair" 111 5th St, West Des Moines, Iowa. I want to say, this guy Jason is the bomb, if you have some electrical work you need done, I am sure he can do it. If you go there, mention my name. Good luck all my friends.

Here, I am mowing up and down a 15 degree yard, with no problems

Here I am testing a new FPV camera on my robotic lawnmower.

I have just added a very cool attachment to the lawnmower. It is a wheelbarrow attachment. This is very easy to add to the lawnmower and will raise and lower dumping the load without any intervention from you. Again, making it very easy for anyone, especially the handicapped or elderly to do the heavy lifting.

UPDATE! I recently, applied for Guinness world land speed record for my wheelbarrow. If they accept my challenge, I will let all of you know. I hope I get this as it will really help my cause. Then I can really help the handicapped veterans the way I want to. Wish me luck. I have the video below, but, I can easily speed it up, then watch it fly.

I am currently in the process of adding a following blue tooth module to this, allowing it to follow you. This test did not work correctly but I will get this modified and working correctly. The plan is to make it follow you where ever you go but stay about a foot away. then with a push of a button, it will go to a preprogramed location (Programed location via GPS) and once it is there will automatically dump its load and return to you. Ready to load it up again and do the same thing. This will cut your work down incredibly. 

I decided to start a test to compare the two robots I have developed. I put my lawnmower up against the snowblower in a head to head fight to the death. Well, actually not to the death, yet. My wife was mad because I even considered it. 

When you have to get that dirt delivered in 6.3 secs.