The Robot Vacuum Thread

I put the charging dock under the bed to keep it out of the way, so it’s a huge faff to retrieve the robot manually for emptying.
That's genius, I should do the same.
 
I just remembered that M1 Macs run iOS software. Awesome.

Stop making me think about buying a Mac. Also your bottom room has a robot face.

Really nice mapping though.
 
This is how you know the proximity sensors need cleaning.

I would love it if Edgar was smart enough to actually realize it and tell me, but instead he just loses all his navigation smarts.

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I would love it if Edgar was smart enough to actually realize it and tell me, but instead he just loses all his navigation smarts.
Huh, strange. Our James does occasionally start speaking about sensors needing cleaning...
 
I suppose that gives us hope that we can defeat the terminators of the future, by throwing dirt at them that they can't clean off. It worked for Johnny 5.
 
So I've recently started digging into the whole home automation topic. Installed an instance of Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi that's running as a sort of server in the kitchen, and discovered that quite a lot of stuff I have at home is supported and can be integrated either out of the box or with minimal fiddling.

Including the Xiaomi vacuum. Oh boy.

Now, I'm a lazy guy, but in a way that I think is typical for some engineers: I'll rather spend hours automating some task, than spend minutes performing it manually. Home Assistant allows to live this motto to the damn limit.

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My robot vacuum now does all of the following:
  • Runs each day at 09:00, but only if I'm not home (because if I'm not home at that time, it's highly likely I'm at work and will be gone for a while)
  • Aborts the clean-up and returns to the dock if I return home while it's running
  • Counts the times it ran for 15 minutes or more at a time, as a sort of "dustbin fill counter"
  • When said counter reaches 3, creates a task in my Things app for me to clean out the dustbin (the only thing that I still have to do manually... but at least now I don't have to think about it, it'll just magically appear in my todo list)
  • Resets said counter to 0 when I actually remove the dustbin (yes, it's a parameter that the integration tracks, along a couple dozen others)
  • Can be controlled with Siri via HomeKit, either from my iPhone, iPad or HomePod
All of this stuff is possible thanks to:
I'll probably do a more detailed writeup and publish the automations code, once it's been running for a couple weeks and I'm happy with it.
 
I'm disappointed that this thread has made it almost 30 posts without any Rule 34 of Rosie from The Jetsons.
 
The method to predict a full dustbin is great, I'd be really interested in experiments to see how much extra general dirt it has to pick up before it becomes overfilled without reaching the count of 3.


I particularly like the idea of it running back to its base when you get home, you should put the base in a cardboard box so it looks like a pet running to hide as you come in. :p
 
I noticed my flat looked like it needed vacuuming, which is strange because the robot does it every day. Then I found the vacuum under my bed, dead, choked on a sock. I also found a push notification from 16 days ago on my phone, where it had tried to ask me for help.
 
Since we have a1st green Xiaomi vacuum that we called James, we decided to make our new Xiaomi s12 (because who carries their vacuum up/down the stairs, honestly?) James XII. Yes.
Simple is best, it never mops.
 
I bought one ages ago. Haven't set it up yet. However I stumbled across THIS PODCAST, and now I'm kinda disappointed in the names FG people have chosen here.
 
Hi everyone! I just bought a robot vacuum so I thought I would share my experience.
I decided to buy one because I have two cats at home and it's annoying to have to pass the hoover every 2 days. I did a lot of research online, because it's my first robot I didn't want something really expensive but it had to be self emptying. I went for the T10 elite from Ultenic. I paid 330£. I had some issue at the beginning because I didn't let the robot finish the auto mod. First time it has to clean the whole flat before you get the map created properly. It clean very well, I have hard floor so it is easy for the robot the get all the stuff. I have contacted the customer service as well because I found that the battery is draining fast so they are sending me a battery replacement just in case this one is faulty. That is a great service. Was not expecting that for the price I paid. Pretty sure there are better robot out there but I guess it all depend on what you need it for and obviously your budget. But it's bargain for this price.
 

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