Wyze Robot Vacuum - Room mapping. Path planning. Efficient cleaning

Lets remember that this is their 1st robot vacuum guys. It took Roomba years to develop the self empty bin idea. Maybe next the gen will have this though, also the more support they get from this one the quicker they can bring out the next model with updated features.

The self-emptying bin would be a huge plus for me as well, however, while I am primarily holding off on some form of a Wyze Hub, I need to know how this vacuum is going to perform with pet hair. My current Vac (ecovacs w/ LIDAR) does normally a great job, EXCEPT when the dog is shedding and the hair gets caught on the guard over the beater bar. The dog hair accumulates on the two metal bars and then block all other dust going into the bin. Even on normal cleanings the pet hair can clog the entry into the dust bin and keep it from cleaning. I hope some of the beta testers had serious Lab hair to contend with and gave feedback on this.

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Did not see this coming. I hope Wyze can support their ever growing line of products. Their customer service is going to be all over the place as more products are released.

Glad there is now a good cheaper contender to the robot vac market. Current makers have the cool featured versions locked away mostly only to very expensive models. Wyze did everything right with this but it needs a dust bin for auto emptying and preferably one where I am not forced to buy expensive proprietary bags to be able to use it.

I received mine today and am excited to use. One feature I definitely want to request is ability to define rooms from mapped floor plan. It mapped the whole floor as a single room. and I am not able to find any way in the app to clean a specific area. It is trying to clean the whole house. Only thing I could do is to add a virtual wall to block a part of the home.

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This is available (with some limitations) in the beta firmware. Even with the limitations, it makes it much more usable for me since most of my home was also created as a single room by default.

Hello everyone! it’s been a few days since we received and have been using the vacuum. We have a 2 year old and two heavy shedding dogs so a good vacuum is super important to us. Here is an honest first impressions review. In this video I give a quick overview of the vacuum, some of my thoughts on specific features, as well as my pros and cons. I am a big fan of Wyze products and was very excited to get my hands on this. Take a look and share with me your thoughts.

I am new to Wyze community. How do I get on Beta testing team?

Received the vacuum and tried it out today. I was super impressed with the quick mapping feature which indeed quickly discovered my entire floor. Unfortunately the cleaning run which followed was a pretty bad experience.

The robot treats everything like one enormous room, meaning that it traces the edges of the entire floor and then tries to fill it all in in parallel strips. Unfortunately this means that it often leaves a room to traverse as much as it can before turning back and coming back into the room. This meant, for me, that the robot wouldn’t do a room completely and then leave, so it was bothersome to have to hear it in action and moving into another part of the house wasn’t so easy. We’re like “here it comes AGAIN”. This approach also appeared to take a lot longer (with a return to base for 2 charges and maybe more!) despite the fact my other robots can easily do it in one take.

The robot got confused and hung up on a few areas that surprised me. At one point it got “wheel lift” stuck under a cabinet which I haven’t experienced any other robot sticking at, and for no understandable reason.

But by far the worst problem was the robot getting stuck for no reason in an area that sent it round in circles. It seemed to be unable to free itself from an area with absolutely no barriers. It spent over 40 minutes trapped in that area – giving me the cleanest 4 sq ft in the world – before running low on gas and heading back to the dock. For all I know it’s going to return there and keep cleaning after recharge!

My general impression is that it’s well designed but the mapping/nav software isn’t ready for prime time yet. I’m wondering whether to return it or roll the dice that Wyze will improve the firmware quickly enough not to try my patience and exhaust my return window.

Dave

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The mapping problem is resolved in the firmware update I received last night. The app now allows to divide rooms (though not as good as I expected). I also noticed that the vacuum treats black sections of my rug (pic attached) as obstruction and very carefully avoid it every time.

@sarshi101 instructions can be found here: Become a Beta Tester – Wyze

I’ll buy it from you if you’re not happy with it.

~Joe

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I am pretty happy with it :slight_smile:

Wyze Robot Vacuum is now available through wyze.com! Today was the full launch. :slight_smile:

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This post feels like a time machine. I must be really spoiled getting my pre-order in so fast :smiley:

I am having a new issue (at least for me) with my robot vacuum. If I select a single room the vacuum starts cleaning the perimeter then it gives up and goes back to the charging dock. There’s nothing blocking the path, it returns to the dock just fine. If I have it clean the whole house it cleans that room happily. It seems to be happening with other rooms too. I’m so confused. Anyone else seeing this issue?

I saw this happen a few weeks back but removed my map and had it remap the rooms… not ideal but I was in a rush that day.

Gotta say, all you folks with your maps look as if you’re being targeted by a Terminator.

Have had Vacuum since pre-order shipping, happy with it. One suggestion for path planning - a little randomization.

Explanation - current path planning is clearly based on the long access of the room, however that room is currently defined in the map. Adjusting the dimensions of the room definition will change the primary back and forth direction to match the long dimension.

However, that tends to have the vacuum follow the same cleaning path all the time, only adjusting if something has moved in the room. As everyone knows, carpet especially but to some extent certain bare floor types (hardwood especially) has a “grain”, and varying the pattern across the grain from time to time is a good thing. Standard vacuuming for example would cross the grain naturally just shifting the vacuum from each back and forth movement.

To simulate the effect, suggestion is to add a feature in the path planning to do one of two elements, or both.

  1. From time to time, change the planning access from the long to the short dimension of the room. For instance, do long normally, but every third or fourth run in the same room, use the short axis for path planning instead.
  2. From time to time, choose a different path planning origin point, Pick a different corner - this will, unless the room is perfectly dimensioned, shift the end path slightly to one side, so you get a slightly different angle on the surface.

In theory (of course) these should be little things in well written code, as the core elements are parameters to the algorithm once a starting point is chosen. And while subtle, they would increase the cleaning net result over time in the same area.

Bob

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