Terrain Insights and Speed Analysis: See Your Yard Like Never Before

When we started building MowDaddy, the goal was simple: track where you mow. Draw a green line on a satellite map. Done.

But once we had the GPS data flowing, we realized we were sitting on a goldmine. Your phone isn't just recording coordinates — it's capturing pitch, roll, speed, and acceleration. Every bump, every hill, every slowdown is in there.

So we built something with it.

Introducing Terrain Insights

Your yard isn't flat. You know this. You feel it every time you hit that slope by the fence or navigate around the drainage ditch. But until now, you couldn't see it.

The terrain heatmap shows slope intensity across your entire mowing path. Flat areas are green. Moderate slopes shift to yellow and orange. The steep stuff? That's red.

Here's what it looks like on my home property:

Those red zones near the back? That's the 15-degree slope down to the drainage area. The yellow patches in the front yard are subtle — maybe 5-6 degrees — but they're consistent.

Why does this matter?

1. Safety awareness — Know where your steep zones are before you mow. Wet grass + steep slope = bad time.

2. Mower wear — Steep areas put more stress on your equipment. If you're seeing uneven blade wear, the terrain map might explain why.

3. Lawn health — Slopes drain differently. Those brown patches you can't explain? Check if they're on a slope that's drying out faster.

Speed Analysis: Are You Actually Efficient?

Here's something we learned: most people have no idea how fast they actually mow.

The speed heatmap shows your velocity at every point on the path. Blue is slow (under 2 mph), green is your cruising speed (3-5 mph), and red is when you're really moving (6+ mph).

Notice the blue patches? Those are turns. Every hairpin turn, every corner, every obstacle dodge — they all show up as slowdowns.

The orange sections along the fence line? That's me going faster on the straightaways. The consistent green in the middle shows my typical mowing pace.

What we learned from speed data:

• Turns kill efficiency. A yard with 50 turns will take longer than one with 30, even if the area is the same.
• Pattern matters. Mowing north-south vs east-west can change your average speed by 10-15% depending on your yard shape.
• Straights are faster. Obviously. But seeing it visualized makes you think about optimizing your pattern.

Try It Yourself

Check out the interactive session above — you can toggle between terrain and speed views, or hit the replay button to watch the mow animate from start to finish. This is real data from one of my mowing sessions.

This is the kind of data that used to require expensive surveying equipment or drone flights. Now it's just your phone in your pocket while you mow.

The Stats That Come With It

Beyond the visuals, we're calculating meaningful numbers:

Terrain Stats:

• Average slope: 4.7°
• Maximum slope: 18.2°
• Flat time vs sloped time ratio
• Slope change frequency (how bumpy is it?)

Speed Stats:

• Average speed: 4.2 mph
• Maximum speed: 7.8 mph
• Time in each speed zone
• Speed consistency score

These roll up into an efficiency score that considers both terrain difficulty and your mowing pattern. A 90% efficiency on a hilly yard is more impressive than 95% on a putting green.

What's Next

Terrain and speed are just the start. We're working on:

• Stripe detection — Automatically recognize your mowing pattern and score the straightness of your lines.
• Session comparison — How did this week's mow compare to last week? Faster? More efficient? Different pattern?
• Seasonal tracking — Build a picture of how your yard changes through the year.

The data is there. We just need to pull insights out of it.

One More Thing

If you mow a particularly interesting yard — hills, complex shapes, lots of obstacles — share it. We're building a gallery of terrain profiles from real properties. The variety is fascinating.

Flat suburban lot? 2° average slope.
Hilly acreage? 12° average with 25° peaks.
Golf course fairway? Surprisingly variable.

Every yard tells a story. Now you can see yours.

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Want terrain insights on your own mows? Join the beta →