I finally decided to paint the Lawnbot400 since the angle-iron already had some rust on it and it appears that it will, as hoped, be my primary (only) mower. So I asked my wife to help me pick out colors and came up with a paint-scheme on the fly. I had a favorite motorcycle that was black and yellow... so I decided to go with what I knew. The blue came as a suggestion of my wife, which turned out nice. I had to give props to Jesus Christ since He is the reason I'm here, so you will notice a few emblems on the mower deck.

I looked around at the open source motor controller for the Lawnbot400 before building the Triple8, but initially decided against it because of the $120 each price tag. I then looked at the OSMC bare PCB thinking I would roll my own, but they are $30 each! But since it is a proven design and it surpasses the limitations of my home-built controller with ease, I decided that I wanted one - I just didn't want to pay $240 to make my robot move.

After designing and etching several successful PCB's, I decided that I would use the schematic from the OSMC v3.22 and make a single-sided PCB layout with only through-hole components - no surface mounting and you can etch it at home. Check out the page here.

This was my 4th motor driver board to design and build since I started messing with this project. Let me start by saying that this board doesn't get hot, and since heat is bad for a motor driver, this is really good. I tested it out with 18vdc and it stays cool as ice. I put 24 mosfets on this board as opposed to 8 on the last one. Also, each mosfet has a heatsink and each set of 3 are bolted together to dissipate more heat. The extra weight of the mower deck makes doing zero-turns a little more difficult, but it runs great and I can't complain. Here are more pics: