On Fri, 13 May 2005 08:57:55 -0400, "wallster"
wrote:

alright all you creative geniuses, put on your thinking caps. Every year
(about this time) i run across discarded lawnmowers. I cant help myself, i
almost always stop and pick them up. Sometimes i get them running and sell
them for some always needed beer money. But alot of the time, the deck is
rotted beyond repair so i'll remove the wheels and engine and hope to use it
another time. I just have to make something cool using a vertical shaft
engine, the horizontals get all the glory. Besides a home-built generator,
what projects have you folks made using these engines?

How about a mowbot -- autonomous lawnmower. It might be
radio-controlled by an operator, or perhaps follow a buried wire.

Extra credit: one with a nav system that could be "trained" once by
an operator and then retrace that path by itself after being trained.
Devising the nav system could be a project in itself. Might be
differential GPS, perhaps a homebrew inverted LORAN type of system
with a couple of synchronized 433 MHz low power xmtrs, a pair of
rotating roof-mounted lasers, or ????

I used to think I wanted to build something like that. Now that I
have the tools and skills to really do such a thing, I've lost the
motivation because I kinda enjoy riding the mower around on a nice
day.