
iRobot is testing software to make sense of all the rooms in a house - sohkamyung
https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-robots/how-irobots-roomba-will-roomify-your-home
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visarga
I have a Xiaomi Mi robot vacuum and it is capable of mapping the whole house
and showing me on the phone where it is and what was the cleaning trajectory.
It's quite smart, it understands room layout, and can handle many rooms
without attendance.

Example of house map:
[https://www.androidcentral.com/sites/androidcentral.com/file...](https://www.androidcentral.com/sites/androidcentral.com/files/styles/medium/public/article_images/2016/10/mi-
robot-layout.png)

~~~
StavrosK
I only wish I could tap the map and have it go there. I keep having to operate
it using the phone controls, and the signal goes to the US and back even
though the damn vacuum is right next to me. This leads to > 1 sec response
times, which make it impossible to steer.

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visarga
I agree, pointing to a location, or even selecting a rectangle on the map
should work.

~~~
StavrosK
Yes, especially given the fact that it already does the exact same thing when
you tell it to go back to the dock (ie it finds a way to a spot on the map,
its dock).

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jgrahamc
I owned a Roomba for a while. It did an OK job of cleaning the kitchen floor
but was noisy, slow and didn't do a good job of corners, or under cabinets
that stick out a little, etc.

But worse I had to carry the thing from room to room because, of course, it
can't climb stairs nor will it vacuum them. And in any room with wood floors
and rugs it got stuck repeatedly.

The most labour intensive part of vacuuming my house is the stairs; Roomba
'solved' the easy part.

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visarga
You're doing it wrong. You need a house with no carpets, all furniture at a
clearance of min 15cm, no stairs, and to make sure there are no USB cables on
the floor or thin slippers which might get "stolen" by the bot. Then it can do
its magic unattended.

I observed that running the robot daily gets much better results than my best
attempt at vacuuming. It's just more attentive to detail and goes methodically
without missing a spot.

~~~
hawski
When I was lately buying furniture I had this in mind. However now I have a
crawling baby with lots of toys and now it's not as relevant.

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visarga
I too am expecting a baby soon and bought the robovac with the intention to
run it daily in his room (now I realize that I want it for the whole house,
because it's so good). It's true that little toys get stuck in, but that's the
same with traditional vacuuming as well - you still need to pick up the toys
before vacuumig.

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chisleu
They need to work on hardware that can actually connect to the app. 3
different Android phones and 3 different Braava Jet robots and none would
connect to the software. Their support gave up. App rating is almost 3 starts
now with tons of reports that it won't connect.

I only mention it because they get such good press, but no one is reporting on
all the disappointed customers.

~~~
stinky613
I think I vaguely recall some confusion when I first set up my Roomba 960 with
my Android phone, but once I got it going it hasn't had any issues since.

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SurrealSoul
I feel like iRobot needs to work on it's software to justify it's hefty price
tag. My roomba just drunkenly roams around the house cleaning up things, but
its just a matter of random luck if it gets full coverage in 1 hour, or 3
hours.

Still beats manually vacuuming though

~~~
dominotw
>Still beats manually vacuuming though

For me main cost of vacuuming is prep work not the actual task of vaccuming.
Picking up cat toy string, feather toys, kids legos, random one of things. The
actual act of vacuuming is fairly simple and enjoyable.

So I don't get how roomba is useful. Doesn't your roomba choke on charger
wires, toys, hair ect ? I have a neato that I don't use for these reasons.

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imglorp
Plus, sometimes you have to go around and rescue the bot wherever it got stuck
or tangled in something. If you weren't present you might have to go looking
under couches to find it and carry it back to charge.

On top of that, you still have to empty the bot's dust bin and spend a good
ten minutes removing the roller and cutting out the tangled hair and string
from it.

If it could automate more of these steps it would be more compelling.

~~~
dominotw
This is my experience too. My neato gets messed up on longhair stuck in its
wheels almost everytime. I have spend a good chunk of time removing stuck hair
from its wheels. I am puzzled by people who say "beats manually vacuuming",
how?

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dovik
HN's readers, how do you deal with your connected devices?

Do they use the same network as you? Or have you a dedicated network to them?
Or an on-demand dedicated network (connection only when necessary/allowed)?

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StavrosK
I have four Wifi networks: One for me/trusted computers, one for untrusted
devices without internet access, one with, and one for guests.

My network can access everything else, the untrusted networks can only
initiate connections to my home server on the firmware upgrade port (which is
used by devices around the house that I've made and which often look for OTA
updates on my server), and the guest network can only access the internet.

~~~
e40
I would love to hear/see more details on how you set this up. It's something
I'd like to do, but I'm not sure where to start (hw, sw, etc).

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StavrosK
The wifi? I just got a Tomato-compatible router, there's a section in Tomato
where you specify the networks you want. The connections are a few iptables
rules, I could write a post at some point.

EDIT: Turns out I don't remember which settings were set by me and which ones
the router added by itself. If you have a Tomato router and would like to help
me replicate the setup so I can write the post, send me an email (email in
profile)!

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uptown
Anybody here have any experience with the Dyson 360 robot vacuum? It's pricy
but claims to address some of the limitations of the Roomba regarding range
and multi-room coverage.

However the reviews on Amazon are less than stellar.

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rullelito
Very cool. I got a Neato Robotics years ago and it was very good at doing its
cleaning room by room, going through each room very methodically. I think it
used SLAM.

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spdustin
They just need to add in a shit sensor. Big messes are made when Roomba runs
over Fido's "accident" when the owner's not home.

