I ran several experiments to figure out the slope limitations (using ramps) for the Wyze Robot Vacuum and thought others here (whether now or in the future) may find this useful to know since I couldn’t find any answers or documentation about these ramp slope boundaries anywhere else.
Firstly, why this matters: most people would call my house 2 stories, but in addition to a long set of stairs between the main floors, I also have two other sets of stairs (so the vacuum would normally say I actually have a 4 level house):
This one is 12" high between the two mini-floors it separates:
And this one is just under 13.25" high between the two mini-floors it separates.
(Yes our house is very old and we have 5 cats, a messy teenager and a baby! So this product is definitely very useful to help keep it cleaner.)
I thought I would need multilevel mapping for 4 levels because of the mini-stairs, but I was hoping I could create a “ramp” for the little stairs so the vacuum could get over them. At launch, I read online that tests on other similar vacuums would work on some ramps/slopes. Some were limited to 15° and some were limited to 20° depending on the vacuum in question, so I hoped Wyze could do ramps of sort as well (though nobody knew).
I got my vacuum today 1/7/21 and charged it up first, then set it up in the app and then ran several tests, starting pretty low and working my way up to increasingly higher slopes ( @WyzeTeam you should’ve chosen me as a beta tester to figure out these boundaries for you before launch!). I reset the map between each one and started it in the same position for all of these.
I’ll just show a couple of the later, more relevant, tests toward the upper boundary (All videos feature a ramp of particleboard that is just under 18" width X just under 36" long X 1cm thick).
The following video (SUCCESSFUL) is ascending a slope of roughly 21.5°:
The following video (SUCCESSFUL) is descending a slope of roughly 21.5°:
The following video (FAIL) is attempting to climb a slope of roughly 24.2°, then slipping partway up the ramp and sliding back down, giving an error that it couldn’t do it:
The following video (FAIL) is with a slope of roughly 25.5° (it completely ignores the slope as something not worth attempting:
The slope limit is somewhere over 21.5° but lower than 25.5°.
It is possible that it could’ve ascended the attempt up the 24.2° slope if the ramp was made of a different material with better friction.
It may be worth mentioning that my first ever ramp attempt was only a slope of 11.2°, and the vacuum made it up the ramp OK, then as it descended, it tried to go off the right edge and high-centered itself, then said “Cleaning Paused” making this first attempt an epic double failure as it didn’t figure out that it couldn’t roll off the ledge yet, especially since there was a wall in the way over there.
I am looking forward to being able to use multi-floor mapping so I can use this between my 2 main floors (where a ramp is just not possible).
I hope this becomes useful for someone else wondering if they can do anything to make the Wyze Robot Vacuum work between mini-floor-levels like I have. If you get a ramp with a slope of 20° or less it should work fine. A little higher should work okay too.
For anyone who needs help, you can use the following calculator to figure out how long of a ramp you would need for your situation:
Just enter in how high the difference is between the 2 levels in the “Distance in height (h):” field, then enter 20 (or whatever slope you are looking for…I just recommend keeping it safe at 20° or less) in the “Slope in Degrees (°):” field. and select the “Calculate” button it will tell you the length of board you need to get/use in the “Total distance (t):” field. Maybe get a ramp ever so slightly longer, just to make sure the slope is under that. I don’t know the width limitations, but 18" was more than wide enough, you could probably make it even more narrow (I’m guessing somewhere around 14-15" is the limit, but I have not tested this. Maybe someone else can give input about ramp width boundaries).
EDIT: I learned you should not use black Gaffer’s tape to hold the ramp in place
If you watch closely, you can see in some of the videos how the vacuum tries to work around the little strip of black tape that was there. After these tests I added more black gaffer’s tape to both the top and bottom of the ramp to hold it steady and suddenly the vacuum spazzed out and refused to use the ramp after that. Apparently, black tape tricks the cliff sensors into thinking there is a ledge it cannot pass (because it absorbs the light and so none is reflected, making it think there is a ledge and would fall). Once I removed the black tape, the vacuum worked with the ramp again.
I am still going to sand down the top and bottom edges of the ramps to have them align closer to the floor, and build some support underneath the ramp to sit on the stairs and hold it in place better. I’ll probably reduce the angle to below 20° just to take some pressure off the vacuum too, but has been working fine at 21.5° since I removed the black tape.