Robot Vacuums... What Cleans Up Your Mess?

Poop Toilet GIF

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@rlithgow1 You need to teach your friends to use the facilities... :slight_smile:

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My friends aren't that civilized...

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I don't know, I think we are... Oh... I get it now.... Ok... :wink:

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Just throwing my two cents into the ring here, I recently resurrected a project to get my Roomba working via local control.

Cutting a long story extremely short, I set it up with koalazak's rest980 package from github:

I have that running under Node.js on the NAS which is my "always on" server. That way, control of the Roomba is just an http:// call away, which means it'd be trivial to set it up to use Rule Machine. No drivers, no muss, no fuss. Assuming Rule Machine can send POST requests with a specific payload - see below.

Most of the calls are a simple http:// GET with the endpoint specifying what to do. Cleaning a room is the one exception, that uses a POST. with a JSON payload to specify the room.

To actually get the JSON, just use the app to send the Roomba off to the room you care about, then close the app completely, and issue the following command:

curl http://address.of.node.js.server:3000/api/local/info/state | jq .lastCommand

assuming you have jq (+) installed. If not, the output is a huge JSON blob, of which you only care about the lastCommand object, and from that you only need the pmap_id, user_pmap_id and regions elements. Just take those three elements, put them in a JSON object and that's the payload of the POST request.

(+) If you deal with JSON and jq is not part of your toolkit, you might want to add it.
GitHub - jqlang/jq: Command-line JSON processor

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@lcw731 Haha, a LEGO took out mine in its first 3 feet...

@dgnuff I agree, rest980 for iRobot is a very useful tool. I have a standalone driver that process the JSON allowing for local control and polls for status updates. Hubitat/Roomba at master · fieldsjm/Hubitat · GitHub

If you are interested in something fancy. @dkilgore90 's iRobot Scheduler App also uses dorita980/rest980 as its backbone. It goes well beyond just start/stop control, its pretty interesting.

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Mine isn’t fond of bottle caps or skitter mice. But I use just do a quick pick
When I hear it start up.

@rlithgow1 how are you liking this new vacuum? Have considered getting one over the years to help fight off dog hair.

So far it seems pretty good. I like the mop as well. I also have a German Shedder... Seems to do well with the hair... Wires, legos, nerf darts, candy wrappers, etc will stop it in it's tracks... Sadly that's what having kids does....

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We have a Roborock S7 Max Ultra. It looks after the whole ground floor of the house for us and copes well with dog hair, an important requirement as we have a large German Shepherd called Sam who sheds something fierce at least twice year.

I have set it up to mop and vacuum 4 times a week and Alexa's verbally remind us 10 mins before it starts, giving us time to put Sam's toys and bowls up out of the way. One of the great things is that Sam detests our upright vacuum but ignores the Roborock completely.

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My GSD is fine with the toys.... It's the kids that leave everything everywhere...ugh

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I'll offer a few new tidbits of advice on the Roborock Q7 max+. Make sure the dock is where you want it before you map. if you move the dock once you have mapped your house it will completely confuse your vacuum and it will think it's in rooms it's not in and get stuck in weird places. This really surprised me. I even had it clean the room it was in and returned to the dock a few times. I thought that fixed it. No go. the next day it was lost again. we ended up picking everything up again today and completely remapping the house. Not a huge deal. it probably was a better map than we originally had. But still a bit of a hassle. Also, while it does a great job with pet hair (we have multiple dogs, two being hi-shedders) and dust and smaller solid dirt, it is terrible with identifying and avoiding poop. unfortunately, we have a foster that isn't housebroken at the moment, and she has managed to leave traps for it twice now. if it does get into poop, you will learn really well how to disassemble and reassemble your vacuum. it is particularly tough to get the poop out from the wheel wells.

Other observations:
While the self-cleaning dock does a very good job of emptying the dust bin. I would still check it every now and then. We picked up a piece of plastic that partially blocked the port where the stuff gets sucked out so it wasn't being completely emptied. I manually cleared it and it hasn't been a problem since, but now i check it every few days just to make sure.

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So my couple of weeks with the Q7 Max+ has been decent. It definitely keeps the place cleaner. Anything it runs into though stops it cold.... (We're trying to get better about picking up large stuff the kids leave around)...

Had this issue with a toothpic, bread tie and a lot of dog hair lol... Completely blocked the base tube. Had to remove the charging base bottom but as it is using metal threads all the way around instead of just going into the molded plastic, it was pretty easy....

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I haven’t had too many problems with it being stopped. When I hear it starting up I usually do a quick run run make sure bigger stuff is picked up. Socks, dog toys bottle caps are our worst offenders. Staying on top of those things helps until teslas releases their servant robot!

I’ve only had that issue once. Dog hair. Or have one of those push button flex shaft grabbber tools, that worked decent to clean it out. We are running about three weeks on replacing the Bags.

Interesting. I haven't had mine clog up that bad yet. One thing I’ve been noticing lately is I’m having to wipe the sensors more freq than I did the first few weeks. Overall we are pretty happy. And it having the added benefit of making us keep stuff picked up. We are going to add a ruggable to the mix this morning, we’ll see how it handles that addition.

So far the biggest negative (and it’s not that bad) is if you move the dock you really need to remap everything.

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We have a long fiber (basically shag) ruggable which seems pretty good with it.

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We have had a Shark for about 1 year now. It cleans 6 days a week. It has "30 day" bin, but that has to be dumped about every 2-3 days. We have half Maligator -- half German Shedder.

Shark runs on its own schedule, by app, or by Alexa. I don't see anything, or any reason, to connect it to HE.

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My god you should have everything encased in armor with such a creature....

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Until she matured, that pretty much describes things. :grinning:
Now, she just sheds -- a lot! The other one is a rescue that appears to be Dutch Shepherd/Pitt Bull mix. Short hair, doesn't shed as much.

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Among my menagerie, (all rescues, most former fosters), I have one that has two kinds of Shepard (78% GSD and 5% Swiss White Shephard) the rest bit of pit bull. There is NONE of the Pitbull evident in that dog. Shes a sweetheart, but man does she give the Roborock a workout. The only time it starts to struggle is when the bag in the self-empty piece gets to about three quarters full (usually about 3 weeks), it starts to not fully empty, or when it finds one of the stuffing-less dog toys

Ours runs on a schedule of doing the main areas of the house twice a day, in the morning and evening. M/W/F It vacuums my office, T/TH it does out bedroom, closet, and master bath. If it can consistently run that schedule, it does a fairly good job keeping the hair cleaned up. The only issue I have noticed is after about 7 months of use, it seems like the battery is beginning to not take and hold a full charge. I might need to investigate getting a replacement for it.