Sunshade for a Robot

You might be wondering just which planet this post applies to.  I assure you that it's planet Earth.

I've decided that mowing a lawn in the hot Alabama sun and humidity isn't something I need to be doing.  Most people would just hire a lawn service, but I decided to try out a different approach -- an autonomous mower, basically a grass cutting robot. The effectiveness of the mower depends on where it's charging station is placed, particularly if you want it to mow both the front and back of the house.  For a lot of reasons, the back of the house was the right place to put the mower.   However, the battery lasts a lot longer if it's not hot when it's charged.  That means it's idea to put the charging station out of the sun.  The west side of the house is very much in the full sun.  I decided that the best solution was to make a sunshade for the charging station and mower, so that it would be out of the sun while charging.

 Here's the mower and charging station before the sunshade:

The mower is only 12" tall, so the shade doesn't have to be very high.  In fact, it's better than it's not, so that the view out the windows isn't obstructed.   However, the mower needs unobstructed access to the charging station from the sides, so the supports for the shade can't be next to the station.  One way to solve this problem is to make a very long shade, but it doesn't have to be all that wide.

I found this nice fabric at Wal-Mart.

It's a polyester canvas with a urethane backing.  That means it will be very sturdy, very light proof and even water proof.  Being water proof isn't a necessity for this application, but it's a nice bonus.  The fabric is 60" wide, so 3 sections sewn side by side gives me plenty of width to the sunshade.  The light khaki color will help keep the area under the shade cool.

I made flatfeld seams to help wit making it water proof.  There's a bunch of ways to hold the fabric in place while it is stitched, but I didn't have any nice seam tape.

Blue painter's tape did just fine.  It's not what I would recommend for fine sewing, but that's not what this is. 

I added a 1" hem and grommets at the corners.  Since the fabric won't ravel with the urethane backing, I just turned under the hem once.

Here's the mower hanging out in it's cool, shady charging station.

Come back next week for some other crazy fun adventure with a sewing machine.