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Comment by bearjaws | Hacker News Reader

Yeah I went from a Roomba 960 (2018) to a Xiaomi Roborock S7 and in my research it was eye opening to see the level of tech difference between the two, even the modern Roomba is using a vision only model, and poorly based on reviews. For the same price, Roborock has Lidar scanning, AI obstacle avoidance and mopping. The thing is, it actually works in the Roborock, it can even spot cords and other misc items around my house and avoid them entirely.

Additionally since it maps using Lidar it completes a complete cleaning of my living room + kitchen area in 22 minutes, whole house in under 40 minutes. That is with it covering literally every square inch of carpet & tile instead of going around in random patterns...

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Do you have any insight on how much of the SLAM data is being shared in both the Roomba and Xiaomi robots?

For example can you use them completely offline or do they 'need' to phone home to a remote server in order to work?

I've a Roborock (Xiaomi) S5 - processing should be done entirely local, but with the default firmware expect everything to be shared with a cloud.

Enter Valetudo - everything is local, including a webinterface to control the bot - installation was pretty flawless, upgrades (one so far) as well.

Check their list of supported robots: https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/supported-robots.html

In general, how is it owning a cleaning robot? Do they get stuck often? Are there any caveats? Do they clean good? How do they handle carpets?

Been thinking of getting one for a while now...

I own a Neato D6, and I'm very happy with it.

As others have said, suction isn't as good as a regular vacuum. But what makes it great is it can do its thing while I'm away. I'm quite lazy and hate vacuuming, so there's no way I'd do it manually more than once a week. But the bot does its thing daily, so my house is generally cleaner. It also has a rotating brush that makes the carpet much fluffier than the regular vacuum, and seems to be better at pulling out hair.

Navigation-wise it's not too bad. I have to remove wires, socks and similar from the floor, or it WILL get tangled. The only thing which is a bit stupid is that it doesn't seem to know its height, so it can sometimes get stuck under things. But I've put some 2 mm wood blocks under that shelf, and now everyone's happy.

Cleaning robots are good enough at their job to be a net positive to your quality of life.

This. Set them to go when you are out.

Ours scuffs the skirting boards a little, but the house is much cleaner. Behind doors, the tops of skirting and difficult corners still need doing.

I feel like the major consideration is: do you have kids or pets? Then get one. Otherwise, probably not worth it.

If you have small-ish kids, you end up vacuuming everyday one way or the other. A Roomba's a decent stand-in for that. When my kids aren't at home, I mostly get by with my stick vacuum. (There the battery-driven ones really are nice.) With the stick vacuum it doesn't tend to leave my cables and rugs in random places, which makes the daily non-kid-time vacuuming similar levels of effort.

I assume pets are a similar deal, though I'm not a pet person.

One thing that hadn't occurred to me before getting the Roomba is that it vacuums a lot of places I wouldn't regularly get to on my own (e.g. under the sofa), and there's some benefit of having a cleaning session frequently that gets to a lot of those places that are otherwise hard to reach. But again, with kids not at home, I run it about once a week.

I'm genuinely curious about the mopping ones since I don't mop often, and always like it when I do. ;-)

Regarding pets: I decided to give a cheaper Eufy RoboVac model a try a couple years ago to help keep things under control with a dog in the house. The maintenance on it to remove entangled dog hair was just too much in the end. Sure, manual vacuums have a similar problem but seem easier to maintain. The RoboVac had no computer vision (local or cloud) to help with obstacles, but that wasn't really as much as an issue as mechanical failures.

Also, my dog wanted to kill it.

Doesnt a Roomba eat lego bricks and other small toys?

Yes, this is why my Roomba doesn't get much use anymore in our house. There's always a loose toy somewhere. We have to have the kids pick up all the toys first before we can vacuum. At that point we end up using a Miele canister vac instead. We can see what we're about to vacuum up. It ended up being the better purchase over the Roomba.

I don't usually let it go in the kids room unless it's right after they've cleaned. The main problem areas in the apartment are right in front of the door, where they take off their shoes (so much sand, always!) and under the kitchen table. And from my messes: in the kitchen, from cooking. Those are the areas I was vacuuming most days by hand before. Again, the main problematic things for me are dragging around cables (from my stereo) and moving rugs, but those aren't more than a few seconds to put back. It gets stuck on something else maybe every 2-3 runs.

My experience with a couple lower end ones and a sheddy dog is that they work well for what they are. Don't expect magic. Expect low effort daily maintenance cleaning that keeps things spiffy. Maybe the higher end ones are significantly better? My bet is that the cleaning isn't all that different since among a product line they largely use the same chassis--there is only so much sweeper/suction/storage they can have.

The one upgrade that would be useful in retrospect is electronic fencing, but it isn't a big deal.

We have a 120qm2 apartment, 2 cats, 1 dog and a child. We couldn‘t live without our Roborock S7. It runs everyday and sometimes even more. No big issues, vacuums, mops, would buy it again in a heartbeat.

I have the S6 and it's so friggen useful even if just for the cat hair. The little mop addon is solid too! I just spray areas that have some sticky / dried on goop and it handles the rest.

I have 2 of them, a 2-3 year old Xiamoi S5 and some way newer Shark. The shark is frustrating to watch, it bangs into things constantly and doesn't give up. I have to go fix the Shark all the time because it drove over or into something, for instance I have a very low TV stand with open drawers, and it will try and try until it drives right in, and then gets stuck. So I have to have a lot more boundaries with the Shark than the Xiomi. The S5 is pretty impressive with its tech and I'd only buy a xiomi at. this point.

With that said, NEITHER are a replacement for a real vaccuum. I would only recommend them for wood floors to pick up pet hair and things like that. I'm really, realyy disappointed with how they work on carpet.

The xiomi is also a lot more powerful than my Shark.

If there's some vaccuum bot that can almost take the place of a real vaccuum on carpet please let me know because I don't vaccuum enough at all.

Unfortunately I also have halfway carpeted stairs and I need to get some sort of vaccuum that isn't miserable to use on stairs.. Please dont carpet stairs. I have a really nice Shark big vaccuum but its not fun to do stairs with it.

> If there's some vaccuum bot that can almost take the place of a real vaccuum on carpet please let me know because I don't vaccuum enough at all.

If that one famous vacuum-repairman AMA on Reddit is to be believed, even most home upright vacuums don't produce enough suction to properly clean carpet. No way they're gonna fit that much power in a little disc-shaped, quiet robot.

The Roomba is rather noisy. The key is that it vacuums daily. It might not be as good, but the frequency really helps.

Right, but without enough suction it's just not going to get any of the dirt down in the carpet, no matter how many times it goes over it. It'll just get light stuff that's right on the surface. Shitty upright vacs (so, the vast majority of upright vacs) sometimes try to make up for this with really aggressive brushes, but that barely helps and is really bad for the carpet—I don't think Roombas have enough room or power to even try that inferior work-around, let alone to generate a strong enough vacuum to really clean carpet.

That might be enough if the carpet starts relatively clean though - most of the deep down dirt gets pushed down through repeated use - stamping around a carpet with muddy boots will definitely ruin things quick but if you're conscientious about usage you're usually leaving surface level dirt that a mini-vacuum can scoop up if it's run frequently enough.

Roombas or similar things definitely can't keep a rug clean forever, but I think it's fair to say they'll make the times you need to get the heavy duty pet vac out less frequent.

We have a Roomba, though I think it's back in its box in a cupboard now. In the end it needed so much babysitting that I gave up and bought a cordless stick vacuum. That is the best home appliance purchase I've ever made. The lower hassle of not needing to extend and roll up the cord compared with my older vaccuum massively outweighs any benefit from the Roomba. Grabbing the stick, quickly buzzing it around for a couple of minutes and putting it away again is far less hassle than babysitting the Roomba.

I have a dog that sheds so much that we couldn't keep up with it. So its been pretty life changing.

We've got cats - and we just invested in like four brooms for our small condo - if you see some fur accumulating you can sweep it up before it becomes a gigantic rug of cat fur.

I'll usually sweep our main hallway twice a day which is a nice two minute brain break from work. As someone with ADHD working these sorts of chores into a very frequent and regular schedule is important or nothing will ever happen.

I've got a relatively old Roomba. It's pretty great. Yeah it gets stuck on stuff when the kids leave things on the floor. Yeah the docking isn't super reliable. But... it's a level of passive, continuous cleaning that just makes everything easier around the house. I will definitely replace it when it dies, and spend more money on a better one.

I got a lower end one on sale and even it has made a positive difference for us. We vacuum less often, but the floor is noticeably cleaner.

My wife was positive we’d be vacuuming just as much, insisted it was just a novelty, but we went from pretty much daily to weekly manual with the bot running daily.

Probably obvious but we realized letting it run in the evening after dinner while we clean made the most sense. You wake up to a clean floor. Prior to that we had it running in the middle of the day while we worked. Effectively it never seemed quite as clean.

I definitely recommend getting one.

I love mine.

Doesn't really get stuck (only time was when it "found" a fallen t-shirt behind a cabinet).

They do clean well for me, as long as I do it regularly. If I don't do it for a week it needs a second pass. But how much you need depends on external factors. Literally external, like how much dust gets in from outside.

Mine handled carpets well. IME of course. I didn't had pets when I had carpets, but at least with wooden floors cat hair gets cleaned fine.

Only caveat is if you have levels in your house you have to bring it up and down stairs but that's not asking much.

Thanks for the link, that looks like it'll fit the bill whenever I scrounge up a vacuum.

Although I think trying to convince vendors they want less data seems a little naive. More likely they'll lock out work like this entirely to make sure the free floor maps of your house (and schedule, and pet presence, and...) keep coming.

> More likely they'll lock out work like this entirely to make sure the free floor maps of your house (and schedule, and pet presence, and...) keep coming.

If your Roomba is rooted, then can't you disable OTA updates to prevent them from doing this?

I mean for future products. I'm not sure they'd care enough to patch up previous hardware. Just my personal opinion based on hardware manufacturers in general though.

I have an S7 and it’s been ridiculously stupid. My old Roomba was less aggravating. The S7 takes 50 minutes to clean 800sqft, always gets stuck in a high rug or chair support. Frequently gets tangled on cables and toys. I can clean tht floor in 10 min with a stick vacuum. Anyone wanna buy an old S7? Barely used, frequently kicked.

The only annoying Xiaomi moments are when it recognizes a sock as dog poo then refuses to do anything in that area (or I couldn't figure out how to reset it). Ah, and it constantly gets stuck on bar stools pedestals.

When it comes to poo, I'd rather it be overly cautious than miss.

Then it becomes a smear campaign.

Can confirm, source: me, cat owner - had to take apart the Xiaomi / Roborock S5 (surprisingly easy), clean it up from cat vomit and also clean the living room entirely...

Why? The thing is supposed to clean dirt. My guess is it only cleans superficially anyway.

Have you replied to the correct comment?

The robot sucked up cat sick then smeared it around the room.

Cleaning everything seems a reasonable thing to do.

As a Roomba owner (with a Cat), I agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly.

I'm picturing this now and it is not a nice picture.

My sister has a horror story with the Roomba and dog poo…

I know mine still refuse to pass on an area where it got stuck once and I can't find how to reset this area to tell it's safe again.

And dryer rack legs...

I've owned Neato, Roomba and Roborock. Hands down Roborock is what I recommend people to buy. Neato had such a great leg up when it first came to market by having the first, and best, Lidar implementation - but their product was marred by horrible customer support, batteries that are garbage and just general failures of hardware that are impossible / too expensive to fix. By the time I gave up on Neato I had 4 of the same robot that I was piece parting out as components died (again and again). Talk about a company that banks on eWaste to keep the sales cycle going.

I'm thankful Amazon bought Roomba - one less reason to even consider them as an option considering all of the current gen vacs are sporting onboard cameras + CV (poop avoidance, is that really a huge concern?).

Poop avoidance is a big concern for me. I have two cats. I’ve had my robovacuum spread vomit all over the kitchen.

I've had great experiences with the Xiaomi products I've bought (34" monitor, earbuds, security cam, air purifier, soundbar). They are popular here in Thailand and at a really, really great price point

While I really dislike the android skin they run on their phones, they also do built really nice phones

Still happy with my Pixel 5 so I haven't gotten the chance to try their phones yet

The Roomba j7+ cord and object detection is working well for me, although it's (probably) more expensive than the Chinese offerings. Regardless, it was a huge step up from my precis Neato Botvac connected (which was probably 5-6 years old though).

Wow, those both look incredibly slick. I've got a cheap like $150 chinese vacuum one and a mopping one but I might have to upgrade if they ever die. So do they actually handle floor vs carpet sweeping/mopping, don't get stuck on stuff on the floor, refill/empty, and you don't have to change the mop pads each time?

That is wild as that basically handles all the prep I have to do for mine. Albeit, 1000-1500 is quite a bit more.

Yeah it lifts up the mopping part when it senses carpet (stops + lifts up) then proceeds so it won't get stuck / drag the dirty mop on the carpet.

There is a limit to raised carpets though from my understanding, I think anything over .5" (13mm) is too tall and it may not go onto it.

The one downside is having to clean the mopping pads since I didn't buy the 2x the price auto cleaning station.

Xiaomi also has working home assistant integration. I have mine set up to start vacuuming when everyone leaves the apartment.

Sounds nice, do these Chinese brands depend on the cloud or are any local-only?

I own a Xiaomi Vacuum Robot and that is by default very much not local only. However there is a project [1][2] to hack some of those devices and make them local-only.

With limited functionality they work of cause without app and cloud connection.

[1]: https://dontvacuum.me/ [2]: https://valetudo.cloud/

Thanks for this, I had a pending action item to look for something like this for my robot.

On a spin-off topic from this project: it says on his website

> The Apache-2.0 license is a very permissive license and a lot of work is being shared for free here, so I trust people to not take advantage of that and sell Valetudo; especially not as their own work. Please don’t disappoint me. Thank you.

I really don't understand why people pick licenses that specifically allow for things that they don't want to happen. It's specially baffling when the author is clearly aware of the limitation!

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31684910

they work locally(local network via app or physical buttons) unless you want to use it remotely via internet. The annoying thing is that it still forces you to "create an account" when you set it up. This was not required 4 years ago but it's required now.

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