Our old cat leaves us hairballs and foamy foot-surprises on a regular basis, sometimes in places we don’t catch that Roomba visits. Roomba gobbles them up. It’s not pretty, but you just clean out the robot with a damp cloth, and the dirt bin can be washed in warm soapy water. It’s not too bad, I think, because the dust already all over inside the bot and bin helps keep it from sticking much, kind of encapsulates it. It does not seem to spread it around much–that hasn’t been a problem. It does not deter us from running our robots regularly.
I have a Xiaomi Roborock S55 (second gen if I;m not mistaken) for about a year now and I just love it. We have mostly hard floors but also a few tall carpets (1-2cm height) here and there. It’s climbing like a champ.
I also like that the consumables (filters and brushes) are very durable, easy to find and cheap to buy.
It’s the best thing for me, after the dishwasher. No more pet hair (black lab) in the corners, no more dust on the furniture. I just programmed it to run every other day on its own.
It also works with Siri shortcuts and all the assistants out there.
The app is also fast and good. You can set boundaries if you don;t want your vacuum to go to certain places and it automatically detects rooms with the latest update, so you can tell it to only run in certain rooms without extra effort.
Cons: the dust bin is a bit small and it’s recommended to clear it after each run. Altough it might work for max 2 runs. It will tell you through the app when the bin is full and it cannot suck air anymore.
Well, I only have some Amazon Dots first gen, which I find myself not using them too much as they don’t have yet localization for Romania, and for some reason the Xiaomi app doesn’t play well with the Amazon app integration. So I didn’t get past making this thing talk with Amazon first as the Xiaomi Skill is does not detect my vacuum.
Since you reminded me, I might as well add this to the cons list.
I may try again some time, if you triggered me, to see how far I get with it this time.
My Xiaomi robot (just like my other xiaomi devices and also my roomba) is fully integrated to my automation system: openLuup and completely locally/run without internet or cloud nonsense like VOI. This is using @rigpapa SiteSensor to bind with Home Assistant. Of course it could be done on the vera too, just not reliably.
I have two neato botvacs d5 and d7. Theyre really good robots, they both have floor mapping features and they clean pretty well. The d7 though is far superior, with more features such a cleaning zones and in my opinion cleans better. However I cannot recommendation these robots be because their app support is horrible. I’ve been dealing with the issue of not being able to edit the “No-go” lines on iOS devices for about 2 years now. I’ve contacted support so many times and they’re absolutely useless. It’s a joke how a company that sells robots worth $500-$800 has such bad support.
Mine work very well, just let down by the horrible app. Also lack a lot of features that could easily be added such a time remaining, and a live map like the Xiaomi.
I also had Neatos, D80 and D85. They killed their batteries quickly, usually within a couple of months, and they’re expensive to replace. We even tried just running them two days a week.
I still have the Roombas running on the original batteries now for many times the lifetime of the Neato batteries, so the extra money spent on the Roombas saves in the long run.
What normally happens is that you try to exclude, and they just sit by the open door. Of course they will eventually self exclude. Getting them to re-include at will is a real trial. Often involving shaking treat bags and food packets…
You will have difficulty contacting Raffael he was banned. you will find him at another forum if you can not find it PM me, As i will get banned if i post a link to the forum.
