Roomba j7, i7 & s9 Mapping Tips and Tricks

[Music] if i had to have just one vacuum robot it would be the i7 plus the one with the auto empty bin that doesn't mean it's my favorite because it isn't it means it's the only one i can count on to do what i need it to do without me having to constantly babysit it or nudge it along i've got a separate video coming shortly that explains why as well as why i specifically prefer the i7 to the s9 so i'm not going to go into too much detail now thing is roombas are terrible at mapping once they've got a map completed if they didn't mess something up their navigation is good enough that they get the job done and if you've never owned the lidar navigating robot you might even think the navigation is great but to get to that point you need an accurate map and that's why i made this video i want to share some tips and shortcuts that i think will help you get the most out of your roomba this applies to roombas with i adapt 3.0 such as the i7 and the store exclusive variants like the i6 or i8 and the s9 all of these robots use cameras to help them navigate so this advice may or may not apply to other models like the i3 when you first get your roomba it won't have a map saved so you won't be able to use any of the advanced cleaning features like room select or cleaning zones so the first thing you have to figure out is where to put the clean base that's very important to building a good map there are several considerations here first there should be a little bit of space around the clean base i found that a little over a foot on each side is enough in most cases though it depends on what's around it you should also think about where in your house you want to put the clean base it shouldn't be in an area next to a lot of obstacles that the robot is going to have to navigate around the more in the middle of everything it is and the more open the space around it the easier time the robot is going to have finding its way around when it's doing mapping runs once you have the smart base set up and your robot fully charged you have two choices do a full cleaning run or do a mapping run a mapping run has several advantages first it won't run down the battery so you can do several mapping runs back to back irobot wants you to do three full cleaning or mapping runs before it deems the map ready for customization and you need customization to access advanced cleaning features you can override this three cleaning or mapping run requirement and i'll talk about that a little bit but you probably shouldn't it's there for a good reason if you choose to do cleaning runs depending on the size of your home you'll probably run down your battery completely during or after each run so three full cleaning runs might take a day or even a couple of days with mapping runs the robot doesn't turn on the extractor bars or the vacuum motor so it hardly uses any battery to complete a run you can do two or three of these back to back depending on the size of your home maybe even more second a mapping run is faster than a cleaning run since it's not trying to clean anything the algorithm it uses is different for example it takes almost three hours for an i7 to clean my main floor but only one and a half hours for it to do a mapping run if your home is dirty i recommend a full cleaning run first followed by two mapping runs this is because the robot will trap dirt under itself as it moves and spread it all around your house it may also clog the caster wheel and front brush if your home is clean i recommend doing three mapping runs back to back during mapping runs the side brush still spins for some odd reason so i recommend removing it to do so you need a screwdriver either phillips or flathead the screw can take either put the robot on a flat surface upside down and unscrew the side brush then lift it up and away when reinstalling it be careful not to over tighten the screw i started removing the side brush for mapping runs when i got tired of chasing the robot around and trying to free the giant clump of dog fur that it twirled around itself depending on how big your house is a mapping run will take between one and three hours if you have a small studio apartment it may take significantly less time to shorten a time and create a better map i recommend removing any and all obstacles this is important put chairs on tables move trash bins outside or put them on top of something put away dog beds and so on this isn't absolutely necessary but it will avoid mapping errors and will speed up the mapping process considerably as i said roombas are terrible at mapping so you want to get this done with and out of the way as fast as possible once your map is done you don't have to worry about moving things as they are pretty good at navigating around obstacles just as long as they are trying to map them if you're doing mapping runs clean the robot between runs to avoid fouling the caster wheel that can prevent it from spinning and scratch your floors although you should clean your caster wheel regularly along with other parts of the robot this is much more important for mapping runs because it's not actually cleaning anything so anything it runs over it's going to carry along for the ride i mentioned earlier that irobot wants you to do three full mapping or cleaning runs before customizing the map and there's a good reason for that it's necessary to get the map to be as good as it can be but if you don't have time for that you can override it just go to the map even though it says it's learning go to the three dots on top and choose customize map once your map is customized you can start doing all the fancy things like dividing it into different rooms labeling the rooms and then adding various zones like no-go zones clean zones dividing it into rooms allows you to use the room select feature where you pick just a specific room and your roomba is sent there to clean just that room and then return to its base you can use this with scheduling or with google or alexa it's incredibly convenient and one of the best features in the app a lot of other robots have this feature it's just not always as as well implemented for example ecovax you can divide it and label individual rooms but they have very limited room labels and they don't let you change them so you can't you can't make your own like you can't call something a bird room which is what i call my room with the bird cages and their selection as i said is limited for example they don't have a hallway so if you have a hallway i don't know what they want you to call it in my experience irobot implements this feature better than anybody else at this point there are several things you should know first is that your roomba will not update the map unless you do another full cleaning or mapping run with a few exceptions if you send it to clean a specific room it will not update the map and find new areas unless you force it but more on that in a bit so if your robot missed a spot because you forgot to move the dog bed during mapping you'll need to do another full run and it should find it hopefully again they aren't very good at mapping the second thing you should know is that you actually can get it to update the map if you only clean parts of your house using room select but you have to do it manually every time the robot cleans it saves a clean map this shows the area that the robot cleaned and in any new areas it stumbled into which is usually none if it finds enough new areas it will do it automatically even if you're using room select to clean the problem is it doesn't look for new areas when you use rim select still it occasionally stumbles into things like a drunk on the way home from the bar and if that happens you can update the smart map based on this clean map unfortunately this doesn't usually work meaning the roomba doesn't usually find new areas because it doesn't look for them or when it does it doesn't override the smart map over time it will eventually discover the places it missed maybe hopefully mine has but not very often if you're patient you can leave the map as is and wait for these magical discoveries and update the smart map with the clean map it creates when they happen otherwise you'll have to do either a full or cleaning or mapping run or if that doesn't work you can always erase the map and start over this time put away as much stuff as you can chairs dog beds bins whatever it really does help if erasing the map doesn't appeal to you there is another way you can play footsies with the robot no i'm not kidding and i will explain believe it or not the idea to play footsies with the robot to fix mapping errors came straight from irobot customer service the way it works is you send your roomba to clean the room with the missing area using room select and once it gets near to the area it missed you use your feet to prevent it from leaving don't kick it no matter how tempting it may be or otherwise move it with your feet like shoving it or pushing it just prevent it from leaving make your feet act like a wall this will eventually force it into the new area during the initial mapping run my i7 missed a large portion of my living room you can see it here the whole area between the tv and the coffee table all the way from where i'm standing to the curtain that was missing and the robot refused to find it even during a full cleaning or mapping run so i decided to give the ftse thing a try as ridiculous as it sounded it took a long time because this thing is very stubborn eventually it got to the area i was trying to force it into but only a part of it i would have kept pushing it but it decided to give up and return to its base with the blue ring the resulting clean map discovered according to it many new areas and updated the smart map automatically to get it to find the rest i'll have to repeat the process in the newly discovered area forcing it into the places it hasn't been to yet irobot please listen this is really dumb either put lidar on your robots or change the algorithm because this is ridiculous thank you you should be doing this job leonard you're a herding dog once your map is good enough you can start using all of the advanced features it has to offer such as room select and keep out zones the best feature and one that no other company that i know of has implemented in this way is cleaning zones most of my other robots have a feature where you can define a custom area to clean and the robot will go and clean it but then it goes away and you can only do one at a time the irobot app allows you to create as many clean zones as you want if there's a limit i haven't run into it these don't stay on your map until you remove them unlike the ecovax app it doesn't just decide on its own to completely mess up your map for fun hello ecovax that's one of the many reasons why roombas are the only robots i can trust despite their many flaws for example i have parrots on a part of the house where their cages are located they're messy eaters and the flow around their cages needs constant cleaning but it's extremely inefficient to clean entire rooms several times a day every other app i've used would either require you to manually create a custom zone each time or partition a smaller area into a separate room irobot lets me set a clean zone around the cages and use either google home or schedule to clean just that area if a robot doesn't have this ability it can't be my only cleaning robot it's that useful hey vacuum the bird cages sure starting optimus prime in the bird cages i want to end this video by saying that mapping with roombas doesn't always require this much finessing i know i made it seem like it's a lot of work but usually it works fine the first time around my i6 the first vacuum robot i had in 16 years created a nearly perfect map the first time around and i'm talking just one mapping run my s9 which is going back to amazon for reasons i will describe in an upcoming video also made a good enough map its first time out my new i7 made an almost perfect map but messed up a couple of areas so while you may not run into any of these issues the information on how to overcome them can be helpful just in case thanks for watching please like and subscribe it really helps and allows me to create more videos like this one until next time i'm mike and this is mr [Music] rumbato

Channel: Mr. Roombato

Views: 351,835

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Id: 5n97MaviH9o

Length: 11min 8sec (668 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 10 2020