Hacker News Reader

Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

I simply do not keep a neat enough house to have a robot vacuum. There is too much stuff on the floor for it to get tangled up in.

View on HN

I used to be the same, but then I got the vacuum and it's amazing how good they really are at keeping the house clean, so I changed my habits and finally got around to doing all the necessary cable management. Also it's not just the floor, the whole house just has less dust in general when used regularly.

It really depends on the vacuum. Mine doesn't have the sensors to know where it has been etc and gets stuck often. It doesn't save us any time but it does still get places that we wouldn't typically get to.

Always get a LIDAR model, the "bump into everything and guess where I am" -bots are generally useless.

The LIDAR models can travel to a certain room, clean it and get back without any issues.

Sometimes I wish I had gone with a newer vacuum. I got the original Xaiomi vacuum and while it has the LIDAR it's lacking on the software side of things and "forgets" the map with every clean. Luckily I have root and installed valetudo on it so I can bypass most of the limitations using HomeAssistant

https://valetudo.cloud/

My house is neat enough because I have a robot vacuum.

The vacuum runs every weekday at the same time. It's mentally easier for me to spend the 1-5 minutes running around the house and get stuff off the floor for the vacuum to do its job than it is to chase after it to get it to dock again.

The biggest motivator is the amount of dust it gathers even when it runs every day. I'd be breathing in all that crap if it didn't pick it up.

This is what works for me too - feeling relief that robot managed to collect all this dust I didn't even knew was there. And that's every single day! Totally worth those ~5 minutes collecting stuff all over the place.

Same here. I'm waiting for the next generation that comes with a claw to pick up stuff and put it in a "miscellaneous item" box on the first round, then go about the vacuum/mop process.

Having to force myself to keep the house neat is the reason why I got a robot vacuum in the first place. You make a deal with it: you keep the floors tidy, then it manages the dust bunny population.

Based on the replies to your comment I might try another model, but I had one and it was a huge hassle cleaning up before it, cleaning up after it and cleaning it multiple times per job because the brushes would get “tangled” on nothing. I stopped using it because it’s less work to just get the mop and broom and do it myself. It feels like it’s main selling point is keeping a clean floor clean, but if you have kids, hair, pets or a party you’re gonna have a bad time.

I have an iRobot Roomba J7 which has a camera and object avoidance. I had a cheap Eufy previously which tore itself apart after eating one too many phone chargers. The Roomba just works around it without a second thought. I'm very impressed, and it's made the change between 'running the vacuum' being a task I need to do 5-10 minutes of prep work for to a completely automated job that I don't even have to think about any more.

For me, cats are the problem. They will always knock something over that vacuum will get stuck on.

I just run the vacuum 1-2 per week after manually removing objects from floor.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com