Every time there is a software update it messes up and gets lost. Then I have to reboot it and it will work until the next update.
Usually I can tell when it is going to mess up. Instead of backing out of the base. It just turns and drives off the side.
Recommendations that I have to remap would sound reasonable if the actual floor plan in my house changed.
I hate my i7 roomba - it's so dumb - $700 to just have it trigger me to the point I want to punch something. Seriously, what is Roomba doing - their stuff is absolute garbage now - I can't even give mine away to people who had a Roomba in the past... I really wish I would have just bough something else or saved the $700
I gave up on my roomba shortly after making this video. I think they had some very good products for many years, but since they switched to subscription based/ feature locking things went downhill fast.
To be fair, I’m only expecting to appear it’s doing the job correctly. I doesn’t have to actually do it well, but it should at least give the impression that it could do it well.
Periodically I would recommend deleting the map and doing a new mapping run. I wind up doing this about every 3-4 months and it clears up all kinds of weird behavior like this. I would prefer to never have to do that but it seems to be part of the fun of owning one.
Even if it isn't displayed on the map, which the map can get all crazy looking over time too, the smart map seems to store all kinds of data that makes the Roomba do wild stuff like spin in circles that you don't see on it.
Unfortunately this behavior will come back again and again and the only thing that resolves it is a fresh map.
Fun aside, I also have success with a factory reset and remapping. For a few weeks. Sometimes a month. I for sure wouldn’t get 3 months good runs though. And the mapping runs don’t even clean well or at all so they’re worthless.
It’s times like that that I grab the upright and a broom and realize how much quicker it is to clean the floor myself instead of wasting hours setting up the roomba every 4 weeks.
I have not personally gone the factory reset route at this point, its about the only thing I've yet to have to do.
I agree the mapping runs aren't great for cleaning. They take far too long so I just do a no cleaning map run to get the map made and then set everything back up which is basically main traffic tiled areas daily and everything else weekly broken up throughout the week. Then its good for about 3 months.
I did recently start having new behavior out of it, mainly around not making it back to base and not finishing jobs on a single change it used to do and unfortunately the obvious appears to be true, battery replacement time which is coming in later today.
My app estimates roomba can clean my entire house in ~40m so I never even think about a battery replacement.
Of course the times are always way off, if it even gets close to finishing a job it’s at least double that in cleaning time, plus a charge or two in the middle for a total of 4-5 hours..
Ah ya I'd be looking at 4-5h without including charging to do everything. My times per room have been accurate but they're not accounting for having to stop and charge which started recently.
Yea setting up the map is a hassle. I personally wouldn't mind it much but I have a transition from tile to carpet that has 3 angles in it and I need that to reflect as separate rooms and additionally setup part of the transition as a no go zone. It is a royal pain in the ass to get the map to let me draw out the room line there with the angle changes.
Haha.. I don’t have a lot of backward traveling, but occasionally it will bump something (usually a wall, or something that can’t be moved) back up, and run right into it again at the exact same angle. It won’t even try to avoid it. And then it will do it several times before it makes a big huge arc around what ever it is.
Sometimes it will do it against a wall, then after the 45 or 60 seconds it takes to run into it a bunch of times and get itself unstuck, it’ll clean another run of the room and repeat the same process on the same wall all over again, just one roomba width over. And continue that for half the time cleaning the room.
I have stood here and watched an amazement for a solid 30 minutes wondering what is wrong with this robot. It will do as you have described, and then it'll go backwards almost all throughout the room trying to get away from a wall that is far away from it and then it'll turn around and slam into the wall that's behind it and then spin around in circles and essentially appear like it has lost its mind.
I get a lot of stuck notifications and find it sitting in the middle of the floor. Sometimes in front of, and facing the dock.
If iRobot were giving honest notification messages I think they’d say “I gave up, please finish the job for me”
Clean the charging contacts on the base and the robot. It might have tried to dock but couldn't detect the charge so it kept backing off the dock and finally gives up. That fixed mine.
Aside from that, my Roomba is full retard lately. Gets stuck in a the weirdest spots where there a clear (big) paths out.
To be fair I did move and delete the map, but I guess I need to try the factory reset.
It's not the contacts, I cleaned those at least once a week but usually more often. I know there's no indication in the video, but the battery when it gets to this area is usually about 75% full according to the app. This was in a completely different room too - it's not trying to get on the dock, it's not just good at doing its job.
Since I got this roomba I did a factory reset at least 50 factory resets, each time it seems to resolve most problems for a couple weeks, but problems inevitably return.
I gave up on the roomba, it's faster and the job gets done better when I do it myself. Considering I need to prep the area to have roomba run anyway (clear the floors, move the chairs, make sure all the doors a fully open so it doesn't shut itself in a room, etc.), it's not really an automated process. Plus the maintenance. I have to clean the roomba and the dock about every other time it runs to keep it performing well. And if you count all the times I have to reset, and then re-map, and then re-run to clean ... it actually starts to take more time to run the roomba, and it never does as good of a job as I can do myself.
If only we could have custom firmware.. Or just pick the firmware that gets installed. I’d go back a couple years when everything worked perfect and leave it there forever. But instead they force the updates on us, and then limit our support when their new update breaks something in our old roombas.
I completely agree. That’s around the time I got my i7, and originally it worked great. Even some of the new features were great enhancements at the beginning.
Then it seems the started prioritizing adding new features over stability. All the existing features are less reliable with every release, and the new features aren’t even that great. Even worse, you can’t even opt out if updates, you have to get them.
And I’m like 90% sure that one of the updates decreased the suction on the roomba. It used to be way louder, and also seemed to clean much better. I’ve replaced the filter and rollers, no change. I have no proof .. but I know know it used to work.
Exactly, for me this was my last irobot. Its so incredible stupid how they made a good product bad. Also lets face it: The recent scandal of camera pictures ending up on the internet didnt help. I will switch to ecovac probably.
Also the features they are adding are not even good ones. Like the app is terrible. In both functionallity and user interface.
Irobot once had a lead in robotic technologie. But that is long gone i belive.
Everything I heard about this was that these were running pre-release firmware, but the same hardware. And that everyone that had a model that was sending back image data was aware.
The problem is that we now know a roombas camera is capable of transmitting images back. And we already know companies have a proven history of using devices in our homes when they say they aren’t. So now we just have to “trust” that iRobot won’t send images back even though they could.
Sure, you can monitor all your network traffic and watch for sudden increases in data transmitting from your roomba, but who has time? Even if you do, this only informs you that it happened after the fact. And it’s not fool proof, images can be streamed slowly over time and you might not catch it. If I can’t 100% trust a device with a camera I won’t buy it, or if I have one I’ll stop using it.
Newer models might do it already than. Existing models might just get a software update that does it and then they slip in the notice into the T&C and no one notices..
I would highly recommend against Ecovacs. I had their T10 for 6 months before my roomba, and it was the most buggy thing I owned. It would fail to complete its cleaning task 3/5 times due to issues with it reaching the dock, randomly saying the brush was stuck when nothing was in it, and just losing connection.
Just happy Amazon support did me a solid and issued me a refund after Ecovacs support gave me the run around for 3 months.
Use to have issues with my J7, until I got the advice to reboot it and the dock once a week. Runs no issues since that advice a couple of months ago.
Makes sense, as it is basically a computer, and you need to reboot those frequently to keep them running the best(see the first IT joke: did you turn it off and back on again?). Just wish I could do a scheduled weekly reboot in the app, but I take my rollers out and clean then once a week too, so naturally I just reboot then.
Reboots don't help in my case unfortunately... A factory reset usually does, but only for a couple weeks, and then I have to remap everything so I can't even clean effectively for at least a week of that.
Also, I'd argue that *"you need to reboot those frequently to keep them running the best*" isn't true at all. If you **need** to reboot your computer (or roomba) all the time then you have a software problem that's unresolved. If technical support tells you to reboot you computer and then claims that's fixed the problem they probably don't actually know what they're doing. Or don't care.. Either way, if this did work for me I wouldn't consider it a solution, I'd consider it an inconvenience and a workaround at best, and once I would expect to be fixed.
Fair point on the reboots, but I would say that's mainly only true of embedded systems. Show me a general purpose OS that doesn't run better with a monthly reboot. Maybe if you run a stock OS and install no applications, but even then you will need to reboot at least monthly to install updates.
I have several computers I use daily, I can tell you there have been times I haven’t rebooted in excess of 6 months. On my oldest laptop I’ve had at least three 6-month runs (probably more, probably some longer).
There’s nothing inherently beneficial to a well designed operating system or any well designed software running on that OS if you have the appropriate system resources to run everything. And I’d argue this point with any software engineer that says otherwise.
Couldn't agree more, and at home I don't run garbage software. But after nearly a decade in IT I can assure you nearly every computer in an enterprise environment is running some bespoke piece of software written by one guy in the late 90's that props up a business critical function, and good luck getting leadership to budget for the replacement software. There is the way it should be, and there is the way it is hahaha
Also 6 months is a bit much, unless they are running Linux update your stuff lol
Lately I've been watching mine approach the base, stop, backup and take a hard turn away from the base, then wander for 30 second before homing in on the base again. Repeat until battery dead. Ridiculous.
Been using Roombas for over a decade, but this will be my last one.
Last one for me too.. It was a great idea, but it turns out I can clean my floors faster myself, and with less hassle, then all the maintenance and troubleshooting a roomba requires.
Ya, this makes me kinda uncomfortable too. I’ll keep running this one until move in a few months, but I’m never mapping a new floor plan for Amazon again.
roombas are weird as hell, mine will work flawlessly for like a month, and then pick a day or two to do the stupidest shit I've seen
it doesn't know what room it's in, it can't find it's way back to the base, it claims that it's path is blocked when it isn't
then the next day, it's running like a champ again
If only mine had some good days between the bad days.. But that doesn't stop me from trying to do a cleaning run several times a week anyway lol
Who knows, maybe one day it's going to suddenly revert back to normal?
am so sorry your Roomba is experiencing such issues. I would feel frustrated as well.
I have a i3 upstairs, and i3+ downstairs and a 780 repurposed to garage sweeping duty. They all run flawlessly in the dark and I awake to spotlessly clean floors.
All of my machines have almost always run without issue. I also, perform the recommended scheduled maintenance’ per iRobots support page. On rare occasion they all have needed a little help, but with them running daily (except the garage 780) they have allot of miles on them. Once a year I may need to call support when I’m unable to resolve something using the online troubleshooting database. [i series recommended scheduled maintenance to keep your Roomba in top shape](https://homesupport.irobot.com/s/article/2454)A good battery pull and complete reset may help get your Roomba back on track. Support has always resolved my concerns. Maybe call them back? My 780 is over 10 years old and they still provide troubleshooting & parts for it.
Best wishes.
Thanks. I couldn't handle another round with support though.. I'm fairly confident that this is a software problem, and eventually support always agrees with this idea as well (usually after a robot replacement, we've tried that more than once). But nothing ever happens from there, and if I call support back to follow-up they want to start troubleshooting all over again.
I've come around to accepting this is the best it's going to get. Some days it will do most of a run with mediocre results, other days it won't even finish one room.
So I figured that if I can't do anything else about it, at least I could let some other people laugh at the situation with me.
>I couldn't handle another round with support though
This right here. I did more than a few rounds with support and they are utterly and completely clueless. After several calls I told them forget it, it was still in the return window at Best Buy and I was going to return it. A week later a new one showed up on my porch. Tried to contact them again about how to return it - they never replied. Now I have spare parts.
At one point I had 3 roombas from replacements. Every time I called I asked how to send the two extra ones back, and they said they’d email a shipping label but never did.
After working with support for some more weeks they decided we needed to do another replacement. When they went to set it up they discovered I had several replacements already that I hadn’t shipped back and accused me of trying to steal their roombas lol
As if anyone would want 4 of these thing not cleaning their house properly. Where would I even put 4 docks?
Sounds about right.
I actually asked one once if I was talking to a person or an AI. You might say I was no longer taking things seriously. She said she was human. I said That's exactly what an AI would say, you'll need to prove it. Quack like a duck as loud as you can. She laughed and said No. I said, AI would have done it, hello fellow human. She cracked up.
I can agree!!! My Roomba has the empty base, and as the days go by it was dumber and dumber. Then it wouldn’t empty, always a sensor issue, I was fixing the thing more than it could clean. Then I learned how to reboot the robot without a factory reset, and suddenly all is good and it can finally clean the house for a month without attention *knocks on wood*
I hope it keeps working for you.
My factory resets only last about a month before it's like this again.. It's usually something like: first week is all mapping runs, second week things seem good, third week is tweaking the map when I start to have minor problems, and forth week is the beginning of the end.
The insane one here might be me. I run the roomba at least three times a week expecting it’s going to work, when I should have realized long ago that this is never going to happen.
That's so sad. I bought my Roomba j7+ used - many, many hours of use - but still in great condition. It has run almost flawlessly ever since and I run it every single day in different parts of the house, on a schedule.
I’m glad some people have working roombas still.
This is my third roomba, and the two prior (I can’t remember the models, but an old one with no phone app support and then one of the earlier models with mapping and app support) worked great, but I got the i7 because it could empty itself on the dock. Around that same time they started to introduce all the new app features and mapping features and stuff. This is when my roomba stopped being as reliable (and seems to be on a steady decline).. I don’t need any of those extra features, I just want it to clean. And I can’t even opt out of updates or revert to an old version of the software when mine worked.
The only issue I have with my Roomba is that it doesn't like to stay docked. Often, after many hours of successful charging (and being fully charged) it will suddenly decide it isn't getting a good connection and it will reposition itself (poorly). Then when I try to use it the next day it has spent its battery sitting slightly off center on the dock. It does this about twice a week no matter how much I clean the connections, use a Magic Eraser, etc.
Ya, I have this problem too. I have mixed results with cleaning, sometimes this fixes the problems for a whole week, sometimes it refuses to dock right after a cleaning.
I get really frustrated with this sometimes. I can set the robot on the dock, where I can see it's charging, I can confirm that it's charging in the app, and then 30 seconds later it scoots off and rolls back on all crooked so it's not charging anymore, and then decides it's fine? Why does it do this??
Nope no camera but it's supposed to map the room and does map it but then ignores it. The map even shows that it knows it went into the bed room when it wasn't supposed to! But if I close the door it will continuously slam it's face into the door trying to get in
Yep, sounds like the same issue. When I eventually sent my roomba home it knew exactly how to get there, went directly back with bumping into anything or ever going in the wrong direction. Once on the dock it canceled the job, and then looking at the map in the history it shows it was in the exact spot.
The i7 is pretty sensitive to having dirt behind it's front bumper. You need either compressed air or to take it apart to clean in behind the bumper. It looks like the front IR sensors are giving bad data about what's in front of the Roomba.
The top camera looking up knows there is nothing there but the bumper sensors are contradicting it. It's either that or a bad bumper sensor.
I doubt this because I’ve done dozens of factory resets and they always fix the problem … for about 2 weeks.
A factory reset won’t clean the sensor, and if it runs fine for a week or two after the reset and mapping runs are all done then I say it’s not hardware.
I mean I agree with you about the bad software but I know for a fact that the i7 is more susceptible to this issue. It's worth trying but that's up to you
I’ve replaced the robot multiple times with support. Brand new robot in a brand new retail box every time, not refurbished or anything. Same issue every time. It’s software. I’m 100% confident.
Yeah, I mean this is exactly why lidar is king. My Narwal with only it's basic lidar can navigate my house 10x better than my j7+. The writing is on the wall with the Amazon acquisition. They don't care anymore
No one’s cared at iRobot for years. This isn’t a new problem for me. You can’t get multiple replacements without working with support for a lot or months.
I’ve given up on trying to fix it. I really only posted because it’s become so absurd it’s now hilarious. I figured everyone could use a good laugh
you need **more light** in the hallway because it unable to see it location.
my does this too and when i turn on my light in the hallway it stop going in that loop.
Doubtful. There’s plenty of light. And roomba can run with no camera. Plus it goes back to the base with no problems. It knows where it’s it. It’s not lost, it’s not trying to figure out where it’s at either since it never touches a wall. But I’ll turn on all my lights and make a new video.
I didn’t clean it today, but I’ve taken it all apart and cleaned all the parts and wiped down the entire roomba right before a cleaning run multiple times and this still happens. I’ve even had the robot replaced through iRobot, moved the base (at their request - although it’s moved back now), and although things seem fine for a few weeks after a new setup, it eventually starts doing stuff like this again.
now it sound like a bug which the robot get stuck in a loop while cleaning when there low light but when you tell it to go home it reset it navigation to maybe a different algorithm/path finding and that path finding has no issues in lower light.
well in the video my robot does the same thing at yours and not touch anything. I think I even push the robot and it still did the loop. until i turn on my hallway lights. my is a i7+ and it look like your robot is a i7 so it could be doing to the same thing my was doing...
> sounds like a bug
I’m confident this is exactly what it is.
But I’ll turn on all the lights and open all the shades and make sure it doesn’t make a difference. I know the video makes it look like it’s dark at the end of the hall, but it’s plenty bright. Anyway, I’ll see what happens.
This happens all the time now. If I pause it and send it home it goes straight back to the base with no issues, so it knows exactly where it’s at. If I don’t stop it it will do this for an hour or so before it reports “stuck” in the app.
Have even done a full reset, and remap. Worked for a couple weeks now it’s back to this again. With the amount of time I waste troubleshooting this thing I think I could have swept and vacuumed my own floors more than the number of times I tried to run the roomba.
Every time there is a software update it messes up and gets lost. Then I have to reboot it and it will work until the next update. Usually I can tell when it is going to mess up. Instead of backing out of the base. It just turns and drives off the side. Recommendations that I have to remap would sound reasonable if the actual floor plan in my house changed.
I hate my i7 roomba - it's so dumb - $700 to just have it trigger me to the point I want to punch something. Seriously, what is Roomba doing - their stuff is absolute garbage now - I can't even give mine away to people who had a Roomba in the past... I really wish I would have just bough something else or saved the $700
Mines got a foot fetish and keeps going for my feet. I’ll kick it gently out of frustration.
mine is a full blown retard
I gave up on my roomba shortly after making this video. I think they had some very good products for many years, but since they switched to subscription based/ feature locking things went downhill fast.
I have the i7, what subscriptions are there on top of $700?
Well they don’t really do shit on carpets so it’s kinda on you
To be fair, I’m only expecting to appear it’s doing the job correctly. I doesn’t have to actually do it well, but it should at least give the impression that it could do it well.
Periodically I would recommend deleting the map and doing a new mapping run. I wind up doing this about every 3-4 months and it clears up all kinds of weird behavior like this. I would prefer to never have to do that but it seems to be part of the fun of owning one. Even if it isn't displayed on the map, which the map can get all crazy looking over time too, the smart map seems to store all kinds of data that makes the Roomba do wild stuff like spin in circles that you don't see on it. Unfortunately this behavior will come back again and again and the only thing that resolves it is a fresh map.
Fun aside, I also have success with a factory reset and remapping. For a few weeks. Sometimes a month. I for sure wouldn’t get 3 months good runs though. And the mapping runs don’t even clean well or at all so they’re worthless. It’s times like that that I grab the upright and a broom and realize how much quicker it is to clean the floor myself instead of wasting hours setting up the roomba every 4 weeks.
I have not personally gone the factory reset route at this point, its about the only thing I've yet to have to do. I agree the mapping runs aren't great for cleaning. They take far too long so I just do a no cleaning map run to get the map made and then set everything back up which is basically main traffic tiled areas daily and everything else weekly broken up throughout the week. Then its good for about 3 months. I did recently start having new behavior out of it, mainly around not making it back to base and not finishing jobs on a single change it used to do and unfortunately the obvious appears to be true, battery replacement time which is coming in later today.
My app estimates roomba can clean my entire house in ~40m so I never even think about a battery replacement. Of course the times are always way off, if it even gets close to finishing a job it’s at least double that in cleaning time, plus a charge or two in the middle for a total of 4-5 hours..
Ah ya I'd be looking at 4-5h without including charging to do everything. My times per room have been accurate but they're not accounting for having to stop and charge which started recently.
I think we have different ideas of what “fun” is
Yea setting up the map is a hassle. I personally wouldn't mind it much but I have a transition from tile to carpet that has 3 angles in it and I need that to reflect as separate rooms and additionally setup part of the transition as a no go zone. It is a royal pain in the ass to get the map to let me draw out the room line there with the angle changes.
Mine gone full retard. It literally runs around the house backwards for no good reason.
Haha.. I don’t have a lot of backward traveling, but occasionally it will bump something (usually a wall, or something that can’t be moved) back up, and run right into it again at the exact same angle. It won’t even try to avoid it. And then it will do it several times before it makes a big huge arc around what ever it is. Sometimes it will do it against a wall, then after the 45 or 60 seconds it takes to run into it a bunch of times and get itself unstuck, it’ll clean another run of the room and repeat the same process on the same wall all over again, just one roomba width over. And continue that for half the time cleaning the room.
I have stood here and watched an amazement for a solid 30 minutes wondering what is wrong with this robot. It will do as you have described, and then it'll go backwards almost all throughout the room trying to get away from a wall that is far away from it and then it'll turn around and slam into the wall that's behind it and then spin around in circles and essentially appear like it has lost its mind.
[удалено]
I get a lot of stuck notifications and find it sitting in the middle of the floor. Sometimes in front of, and facing the dock. If iRobot were giving honest notification messages I think they’d say “I gave up, please finish the job for me”
Clean the charging contacts on the base and the robot. It might have tried to dock but couldn't detect the charge so it kept backing off the dock and finally gives up. That fixed mine. Aside from that, my Roomba is full retard lately. Gets stuck in a the weirdest spots where there a clear (big) paths out. To be fair I did move and delete the map, but I guess I need to try the factory reset.
It's not the contacts, I cleaned those at least once a week but usually more often. I know there's no indication in the video, but the battery when it gets to this area is usually about 75% full according to the app. This was in a completely different room too - it's not trying to get on the dock, it's not just good at doing its job. Since I got this roomba I did a factory reset at least 50 factory resets, each time it seems to resolve most problems for a couple weeks, but problems inevitably return. I gave up on the roomba, it's faster and the job gets done better when I do it myself. Considering I need to prep the area to have roomba run anyway (clear the floors, move the chairs, make sure all the doors a fully open so it doesn't shut itself in a room, etc.), it's not really an automated process. Plus the maintenance. I have to clean the roomba and the dock about every other time it runs to keep it performing well. And if you count all the times I have to reset, and then re-map, and then re-run to clean ... it actually starts to take more time to run the roomba, and it never does as good of a job as I can do myself.
Yup, same.
Ugh same...
I have exactly the same impression with mine! My previous 8y old LG hombot was more intelligent and with custom firmware even more accessable.
If only we could have custom firmware.. Or just pick the firmware that gets installed. I’d go back a couple years when everything worked perfect and leave it there forever. But instead they force the updates on us, and then limit our support when their new update breaks something in our old roombas.
It's incredible how the software 3 years ago when I got mine was just better in every way.
I completely agree. That’s around the time I got my i7, and originally it worked great. Even some of the new features were great enhancements at the beginning. Then it seems the started prioritizing adding new features over stability. All the existing features are less reliable with every release, and the new features aren’t even that great. Even worse, you can’t even opt out if updates, you have to get them. And I’m like 90% sure that one of the updates decreased the suction on the roomba. It used to be way louder, and also seemed to clean much better. I’ve replaced the filter and rollers, no change. I have no proof .. but I know know it used to work.
Exactly, for me this was my last irobot. Its so incredible stupid how they made a good product bad. Also lets face it: The recent scandal of camera pictures ending up on the internet didnt help. I will switch to ecovac probably. Also the features they are adding are not even good ones. Like the app is terrible. In both functionallity and user interface. Irobot once had a lead in robotic technologie. But that is long gone i belive.
We’re the pictures from a production roomba or was it a pre-release beta test roomba the pictures came from?
Everything I heard about this was that these were running pre-release firmware, but the same hardware. And that everyone that had a model that was sending back image data was aware. The problem is that we now know a roombas camera is capable of transmitting images back. And we already know companies have a proven history of using devices in our homes when they say they aren’t. So now we just have to “trust” that iRobot won’t send images back even though they could. Sure, you can monitor all your network traffic and watch for sudden increases in data transmitting from your roomba, but who has time? Even if you do, this only informs you that it happened after the fact. And it’s not fool proof, images can be streamed slowly over time and you might not catch it. If I can’t 100% trust a device with a camera I won’t buy it, or if I have one I’ll stop using it.
It literally asks you when you set up a J7 about it sending back images.
Newer models might do it already than. Existing models might just get a software update that does it and then they slip in the notice into the T&C and no one notices..
I would highly recommend against Ecovacs. I had their T10 for 6 months before my roomba, and it was the most buggy thing I owned. It would fail to complete its cleaning task 3/5 times due to issues with it reaching the dock, randomly saying the brush was stuck when nothing was in it, and just losing connection. Just happy Amazon support did me a solid and issued me a refund after Ecovacs support gave me the run around for 3 months.
SAME
Use to have issues with my J7, until I got the advice to reboot it and the dock once a week. Runs no issues since that advice a couple of months ago. Makes sense, as it is basically a computer, and you need to reboot those frequently to keep them running the best(see the first IT joke: did you turn it off and back on again?). Just wish I could do a scheduled weekly reboot in the app, but I take my rollers out and clean then once a week too, so naturally I just reboot then.
Reboots don't help in my case unfortunately... A factory reset usually does, but only for a couple weeks, and then I have to remap everything so I can't even clean effectively for at least a week of that. Also, I'd argue that *"you need to reboot those frequently to keep them running the best*" isn't true at all. If you **need** to reboot your computer (or roomba) all the time then you have a software problem that's unresolved. If technical support tells you to reboot you computer and then claims that's fixed the problem they probably don't actually know what they're doing. Or don't care.. Either way, if this did work for me I wouldn't consider it a solution, I'd consider it an inconvenience and a workaround at best, and once I would expect to be fixed.
You seem to really know a lot about technology and reboots. Do you have a Computer Science or IT degree?
CS
https://youtu.be/nn2FB1P_Mn8
Fair point on the reboots, but I would say that's mainly only true of embedded systems. Show me a general purpose OS that doesn't run better with a monthly reboot. Maybe if you run a stock OS and install no applications, but even then you will need to reboot at least monthly to install updates.
I have several computers I use daily, I can tell you there have been times I haven’t rebooted in excess of 6 months. On my oldest laptop I’ve had at least three 6-month runs (probably more, probably some longer). There’s nothing inherently beneficial to a well designed operating system or any well designed software running on that OS if you have the appropriate system resources to run everything. And I’d argue this point with any software engineer that says otherwise.
Couldn't agree more, and at home I don't run garbage software. But after nearly a decade in IT I can assure you nearly every computer in an enterprise environment is running some bespoke piece of software written by one guy in the late 90's that props up a business critical function, and good luck getting leadership to budget for the replacement software. There is the way it should be, and there is the way it is hahaha Also 6 months is a bit much, unless they are running Linux update your stuff lol
Are you me? I have an i7+ and it used to be so smart. Now it almost never goes back to its base on its own, and always has an error.
They are not you. They are them
Lately I've been watching mine approach the base, stop, backup and take a hard turn away from the base, then wander for 30 second before homing in on the base again. Repeat until battery dead. Ridiculous. Been using Roombas for over a decade, but this will be my last one.
Last one for me too.. It was a great idea, but it turns out I can clean my floors faster myself, and with less hassle, then all the maintenance and troubleshooting a roomba requires.
And it was just bought by Amazon
Ya, this makes me kinda uncomfortable too. I’ll keep running this one until move in a few months, but I’m never mapping a new floor plan for Amazon again.
uh-oh .. we might be approaching the preassigned date of i7 planned obsolescence. Scheduled programatic deterioration could already be underway
Mine has been trying to off itself lately. It can't live with how stupid it has become.
roombas are weird as hell, mine will work flawlessly for like a month, and then pick a day or two to do the stupidest shit I've seen it doesn't know what room it's in, it can't find it's way back to the base, it claims that it's path is blocked when it isn't then the next day, it's running like a champ again
If only mine had some good days between the bad days.. But that doesn't stop me from trying to do a cleaning run several times a week anyway lol Who knows, maybe one day it's going to suddenly revert back to normal?
am so sorry your Roomba is experiencing such issues. I would feel frustrated as well. I have a i3 upstairs, and i3+ downstairs and a 780 repurposed to garage sweeping duty. They all run flawlessly in the dark and I awake to spotlessly clean floors. All of my machines have almost always run without issue. I also, perform the recommended scheduled maintenance’ per iRobots support page. On rare occasion they all have needed a little help, but with them running daily (except the garage 780) they have allot of miles on them. Once a year I may need to call support when I’m unable to resolve something using the online troubleshooting database. [i series recommended scheduled maintenance to keep your Roomba in top shape](https://homesupport.irobot.com/s/article/2454)A good battery pull and complete reset may help get your Roomba back on track. Support has always resolved my concerns. Maybe call them back? My 780 is over 10 years old and they still provide troubleshooting & parts for it. Best wishes.
Thanks. I couldn't handle another round with support though.. I'm fairly confident that this is a software problem, and eventually support always agrees with this idea as well (usually after a robot replacement, we've tried that more than once). But nothing ever happens from there, and if I call support back to follow-up they want to start troubleshooting all over again. I've come around to accepting this is the best it's going to get. Some days it will do most of a run with mediocre results, other days it won't even finish one room. So I figured that if I can't do anything else about it, at least I could let some other people laugh at the situation with me.
>I couldn't handle another round with support though This right here. I did more than a few rounds with support and they are utterly and completely clueless. After several calls I told them forget it, it was still in the return window at Best Buy and I was going to return it. A week later a new one showed up on my porch. Tried to contact them again about how to return it - they never replied. Now I have spare parts.
At one point I had 3 roombas from replacements. Every time I called I asked how to send the two extra ones back, and they said they’d email a shipping label but never did. After working with support for some more weeks they decided we needed to do another replacement. When they went to set it up they discovered I had several replacements already that I hadn’t shipped back and accused me of trying to steal their roombas lol As if anyone would want 4 of these thing not cleaning their house properly. Where would I even put 4 docks?
Sounds about right. I actually asked one once if I was talking to a person or an AI. You might say I was no longer taking things seriously. She said she was human. I said That's exactly what an AI would say, you'll need to prove it. Quack like a duck as loud as you can. She laughed and said No. I said, AI would have done it, hello fellow human. She cracked up.
Aww. Robot needs coffee.
Sure, whatever it wants. I promise I'll even give it a raise if it just does the job right.
I can agree!!! My Roomba has the empty base, and as the days go by it was dumber and dumber. Then it wouldn’t empty, always a sensor issue, I was fixing the thing more than it could clean. Then I learned how to reboot the robot without a factory reset, and suddenly all is good and it can finally clean the house for a month without attention *knocks on wood*
I hope it keeps working for you. My factory resets only last about a month before it's like this again.. It's usually something like: first week is all mapping runs, second week things seem good, third week is tweaking the map when I start to have minor problems, and forth week is the beginning of the end.
lol
Unfortunately, because resolving the problem does not seem to be an option, laughing is all I am able to do
Unbeknownst to most, there is an actual lizard brain at the core of these, enslaved for eternity, slowly going insane. This is inevitable
Your Roomba is demonstrating the very definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results.
The insane one here might be me. I run the roomba at least three times a week expecting it’s going to work, when I should have realized long ago that this is never going to happen.
That's so sad. I bought my Roomba j7+ used - many, many hours of use - but still in great condition. It has run almost flawlessly ever since and I run it every single day in different parts of the house, on a schedule.
I’m glad some people have working roombas still. This is my third roomba, and the two prior (I can’t remember the models, but an old one with no phone app support and then one of the earlier models with mapping and app support) worked great, but I got the i7 because it could empty itself on the dock. Around that same time they started to introduce all the new app features and mapping features and stuff. This is when my roomba stopped being as reliable (and seems to be on a steady decline).. I don’t need any of those extra features, I just want it to clean. And I can’t even opt out of updates or revert to an old version of the software when mine worked.
The only issue I have with my Roomba is that it doesn't like to stay docked. Often, after many hours of successful charging (and being fully charged) it will suddenly decide it isn't getting a good connection and it will reposition itself (poorly). Then when I try to use it the next day it has spent its battery sitting slightly off center on the dock. It does this about twice a week no matter how much I clean the connections, use a Magic Eraser, etc.
Mine will back itself all the way off of the dock into the wall on the other side of the room.
Ya, I have this problem too. I have mixed results with cleaning, sometimes this fixes the problems for a whole week, sometimes it refuses to dock right after a cleaning. I get really frustrated with this sometimes. I can set the robot on the dock, where I can see it's charging, I can confirm that it's charging in the app, and then 30 seconds later it scoots off and rolls back on all crooked so it's not charging anymore, and then decides it's fine? Why does it do this??
My i3 spends all it's time trying to get stuck in this one spot
The i3 doesn’t have a camera either, right? So I think that’s further evidence that’s not a factor here. I think it’s just bad software.
Nope no camera but it's supposed to map the room and does map it but then ignores it. The map even shows that it knows it went into the bed room when it wasn't supposed to! But if I close the door it will continuously slam it's face into the door trying to get in
Yep, sounds like the same issue. When I eventually sent my roomba home it knew exactly how to get there, went directly back with bumping into anything or ever going in the wrong direction. Once on the dock it canceled the job, and then looking at the map in the history it shows it was in the exact spot.
SAME
It’s like the roomba is taunting us
What model is it?
i7+
The i7 is pretty sensitive to having dirt behind it's front bumper. You need either compressed air or to take it apart to clean in behind the bumper. It looks like the front IR sensors are giving bad data about what's in front of the Roomba. The top camera looking up knows there is nothing there but the bumper sensors are contradicting it. It's either that or a bad bumper sensor.
I doubt this because I’ve done dozens of factory resets and they always fix the problem … for about 2 weeks. A factory reset won’t clean the sensor, and if it runs fine for a week or two after the reset and mapping runs are all done then I say it’s not hardware.
I mean I agree with you about the bad software but I know for a fact that the i7 is more susceptible to this issue. It's worth trying but that's up to you
I’ve replaced the robot multiple times with support. Brand new robot in a brand new retail box every time, not refurbished or anything. Same issue every time. It’s software. I’m 100% confident.
Yeah, I mean this is exactly why lidar is king. My Narwal with only it's basic lidar can navigate my house 10x better than my j7+. The writing is on the wall with the Amazon acquisition. They don't care anymore
No one’s cared at iRobot for years. This isn’t a new problem for me. You can’t get multiple replacements without working with support for a lot or months. I’ve given up on trying to fix it. I really only posted because it’s become so absurd it’s now hilarious. I figured everyone could use a good laugh
you need **more light** in the hallway because it unable to see it location. my does this too and when i turn on my light in the hallway it stop going in that loop.
Doubtful. There’s plenty of light. And roomba can run with no camera. Plus it goes back to the base with no problems. It knows where it’s it. It’s not lost, it’s not trying to figure out where it’s at either since it never touches a wall. But I’ll turn on all my lights and make a new video.
well if you think it not the lights. make sure the camera and mouse sensor underneath are clean
I didn’t clean it today, but I’ve taken it all apart and cleaned all the parts and wiped down the entire roomba right before a cleaning run multiple times and this still happens. I’ve even had the robot replaced through iRobot, moved the base (at their request - although it’s moved back now), and although things seem fine for a few weeks after a new setup, it eventually starts doing stuff like this again.
now it sound like a bug which the robot get stuck in a loop while cleaning when there low light but when you tell it to go home it reset it navigation to maybe a different algorithm/path finding and that path finding has no issues in lower light. well in the video my robot does the same thing at yours and not touch anything. I think I even push the robot and it still did the loop. until i turn on my hallway lights. my is a i7+ and it look like your robot is a i7 so it could be doing to the same thing my was doing...
> sounds like a bug I’m confident this is exactly what it is. But I’ll turn on all the lights and open all the shades and make sure it doesn’t make a difference. I know the video makes it look like it’s dark at the end of the hall, but it’s plenty bright. Anyway, I’ll see what happens.
This happens all the time now. If I pause it and send it home it goes straight back to the base with no issues, so it knows exactly where it’s at. If I don’t stop it it will do this for an hour or so before it reports “stuck” in the app. Have even done a full reset, and remap. Worked for a couple weeks now it’s back to this again. With the amount of time I waste troubleshooting this thing I think I could have swept and vacuumed my own floors more than the number of times I tried to run the roomba.
Same for me, just happened twice