[Electronics-Talk] Roborock Vacuum

Fri May 24 15:09:20 UTC 2024

Hi.

I can answer  the hard floors question. It does great on those. That's 
practically all that we have, much to my displeasure. We don't have the 
q5 however, ours is an older and much more expensive S6. In my opinion 
just from reading about it the Q5 is a much better option for less money 
besides.

In general, you don't really have issues with the wheels tracking dirt, 
but you can pick the bot up and try to clean off the wheels every now 
and It won't mind being placed upside down while you work on it. It 
probably does have a button in the turret that helps it determine if it 
has wedged itself under something that is pushing down on the turret and 
thus could be forcing the turret to not be able to spin, but when it's 
not running, it won't pay attention to that.

You can snatch it from the floor even while it's running, and when the 
suspension on the wheels unloads it will pause itself. When you resume 
it with the start clean button, it will aquire its position before 
proceeding, a process that will not work if it's not yet mapped your 
place, so avoid picking it up if you can during first run. You can drag 
it without picking it up if it just got stuck on something that you can 
free it from without needing to get at its underside.

Like I said to Kay earlier, you'd want to straighten up the house pretty 
nicely before first run, because if you can help it at all, you want it 
not to be dealing with extra confusions until the map is created. After 
it gets the map going, you can relax and it should be able to deal with 
the normal shenanigans. Things to think about are mostly going to 
involve cables being in the way, doors that are closed that you want it 
to go through and map what's behind them, furnature that's sitting in 
different places than normal, dog toys or other stuff that would 
possibly get it stuck, etc. It'll eventually get to the point where dog 
toys are not actually a problem generally, you just need it to hopefully 
finish mapping without getting interrupted and without having to start 
over because it got confused about where it was and such. You can move 
furniture whenever you want but if you move like everything, it may get 
confused. You'll know because it'll run longer, get in a situation more 
often or may be unable to find the dock. You can keep running it and 
hope it figures it out again or you can delete the map.

On the default map where the dock is, it will get all confused if you 
move the dock, so try to think ahead on that. If you are running it from 
the app or a schedule, sometimes you can get better results in terms of 
needing to figure out the map again using the physical start clean 
button on the machine itself.

It maps every time it runs. You'll get used to knowing what it's doing. 
It goes counter clockwise around everywhere that it can access first, 
doing a boarder clean for one, and understanding its environment for 
another. It keeps its right side next to the perimeter that it can move 
in, turning right when ever it can, and if it  comes up to something in 
front of it while something is right of it, it'll then turn left or do 
the 180. In that way, it'll go clockwise through every room and 
eventually do a complete circuit of its environment that way. Only when 
that finishes will it start going across the rooms doing the normal 
clean. This is how it can sometimes figure itself out if you do bad 
things to its environment, but sometimes if you mess with things a lot 
to make rooms seem completely different it may have to bs it, which may 
or may not eventually result in the map being updated to match the new 
layout.

What ever you do, get a smart one with whole-home mapping like that Q5 
has, and I personally recommend that you go for LiDAR mapping and not 
VSLAM or any of the other versions, but VSLAM works too if you must. If 
you hadn't heard, LiDAR uses a laser light that's not visible to humans, 
it spins the laser light around and measures how fast the receiver in 
the turret can see the laser bounce back from the nearest object. 
Certain things are invisible or confusing to LiDAR like Chrome 
reflective surfaces and glass doors, but for the most part LiDAR has 
been the most reliable option. VSLAM looks up at the ceiling with a 
camera and tries to recognize the location by recognizing the image it 
sees against the library. In theory that sounds better, but it can fail 
in really dark environments like we blind folks may often have.

LiDAR means light image distance and ranging.

VSLAM means uh, Visual simultaneous learning and mapping? Something like 
that anyway

Cheers:
Aaron Spears, AKA Valiant8086 General Partner at Valiant Galaxy Associates "we make (VERY GOOD AUDIOGAMES) for the blind comunity" http://valiantGalaxy.com

On 5/24/2024 7:57 AM, Tracy Carcione via Electronics-Talk wrote:
> Thanks!
> I forgot to ask, do you have pets?  How does it do with fur?
> I don't care about mopping, but does it vacuum hard floors, like the
> kitchen?
> Tracy
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Electronics-Talk <electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of
> Kay Malmquist via Electronics-Talk
> Sent: Friday, May 24, 2024 4:49 AM
> To: Discussion of accessible home electronics and appliances
> <electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Kay Malmquist <kay.malmquist at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Electronics-Talk] Roborock Vacuum
>
> Hi Tracy,
> I love the little critter.  He has mapped the house, both upstairs and
> downstairs and does a great job.  I would not really recommend the Q5 for
> mopping because it does what is called a passive mopping because the mop pad
> doesn't move, just the vacuum does.  There are other models of the Roborock
> that do a better job of that.  This one also does not empty its own dust
> bin, but for the price it does a phenomenal job.  I have a friend that knows
> his stuff when it comes to these robotic vacuums and if you want to know
> which one is best for your needs, he is the person to ask.  I have no
> regrets about buying this one.  You can adjust the amount of suction as it
> cleans.  There are some things like the maps that aren't accessible but it
> does a good job of putting that together.  You have to move things out of
> the way for it, but you have to do that while you clean with a normal vac so
> this isn't really anything more than you would do otherwise.  There are
> Roborocks that mop very well and go to the dock and empty and clean the mop.
>
> They also have self emptying dust bins and that is a nice feature if you
> want it.  Overall, I am totally satisfied with the one that I have now.
> Hope this helps.
>
> Kay Malmquist
> kay.malmquist at gmail.com
>
> "Abundance flows into your life when gratitude flows out of your heart."
> - Jon Gordon
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Tracy Carcione via Electronics-Talk" <electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
> To: "'Discussion of accessible home electronics and appliances'"
> <electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: <carcione at access.net>
> Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2024 5:59 PM
> Subject: [Electronics-Talk] Roborock Vacuum
>
>
> To the person who recently bought a Roborock Q5, Kay?, how is it going?  Are
> you happy with your purchase?  Has it proved to be sufficiently accessible?
>
>
> I am seriously tempted to get one myself, but I'm still not sure.
>
> Tracy
>
>
>
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