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How to stop a robot vacuum from getting stuck on the laundry rack
- leobg 4y agoThose pesky 1st world problems!
- hprotagonist 4y agononsense. Just get the dog to have a poo in the living room, this will distract the Roomba. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=776220970364&set=a.519796137784.2026754.57300687&type=3&theater https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=776220970364&set=a.5...
- xattt 4y agoCat vomit from a cat that obsessively eats any exposed cellophane is also an option. Context: personal experience
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoReminds me of the old “Space Pen vs. Pencil” urban legend: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-nasa-spen/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-n...
- KerrickStaley 4y agoI recently purchased a Roomba Evo i3 and I have this exact same problem, only with my bar stools [1]. The bar stools have horizontal supports that stick up about 25 mm from the ground—not enough to trigger the bump sensor but enough for the robot to be unable to drive over them. I'm not super excited about this particular solution because it might affect the stability of the barstools when people are sitting in them, but I'm considering making some 3D-printed pieces to increase the height of the horizontal support enough to trigger the bump sensor. (If you're reading this and work at iRobot, please file an internal bug report about this!) [1] Similar to this product: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Walker-Edison-Furniture-Company-29-3-8-in-Grey-Faux-Leather-Bar-Stools-Set-of-2-HD8371/312422768 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Walker-Edison-Furniture-Company-...
- mgdlbp 4y agoHeh, same with a different brand of vacuum and a chair. Tubular steel + Bauhaus design seems to be the concept. https://www.google.com/search?q=tubular+steel+furniture&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=tubular+steel+furniture&tbm=... An example among the Wikipedia-notable models of furniture, for rabbit-holing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassily_Chair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassily_Chair Edit: The front of the robot would ride up until the wheels were against the bar and lost traction, so it could still back off easily. The (Wyze) firmware was smart enough to do so and record the spot as obstructed after a few seconds of wheelspin, but this always amounted to several minutes of loud tyre slippage as it got around the entire chair. That firmware also trusts its LIDAR completely (thus bedskirts need a lifted up port or it won't try to go through), so tape strung between the chair legs at turret height worked at first. The tape kept getting stepped on, though, so spare adhesive bumpers beneath the existing feet turned out to be our final solution.
- hedgehog 4y agoWe have similar chairs and have to prop them up before the Roomba runs to avoid it getting stuck.
- GenerocUsername 4y ago
- enw 4y agoNow how to make it not get stuck in wires so easily?
- kadoban 4y agoYou let it run when there's wires around? I went through and attached all wires to the wall or behind immovable things before I let the vacuum run. I just assumed it would rip the crap out of my wires and start a fire.
- colechristensen 4y agoCable management.
- kyriakos 4y agoStill gets stuck with the rubber tube cable management, also makes changes to my setup a huge hassle. Considering buying trucking and sticking it to the floor.
- masklinn 4y agoPreventing it from getting into the wires is the only option I know of. Either cable-management to put all the cables off of the ground or in gutters, or block off the area using magnetic tape, virtual walls, or redzones depending on your vacuum.
- nr2x 4y agoIKEA Poang vs Roomba is the worst.
- tpmx 4y agoPut some magnetic boundary tape underneath that wooden plank in the back that it gets stuck on. It worked with a Roborock.
- kube-system 4y agoAdd some feet to the bottom like these: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-1-in-Heavy-Duty-Anti-Skid-Surface-Pads-4-Pack-49644/203661092 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-1-in-Heavy-Duty-Anti-Sk...
- bonniemuffin 4y agoI have a couple pieces of furniture where I've added custom parts to make them roomba-compatible so it wouldn't get stuck on them. I've also gotten rid of more than one piece of furniture because it didn't play nice with the robot. Sorry chair, if the robot doesn't like you, I just can't keep you.
- kaetemi 4y agoMine will drive under a chair and then turn around in circles eternally.
- Tepix 4y agoThe smarter ones can deal with chairs pretty well.
- mattigames 4y agoThe rise of the machines seems that it will be a bit more subtle than Hollywood predicted.
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y agoEquipment is designed around the users thereof. Roads, are designed for the main users - people, driving. So self-driving cars have to cope with that. But we'll soon get to the point where some road markings / signs are changed around to make them more obvious to self-driving cars, in order to avert rare but costly accidents. The point to watch out for is when the self-driving cars are the primary users, and the needs of human drivers start to fall away as not important any more. Domestic furniture will continue to be designed for both accepting the human posterior and for interacting well with domestic automation.
- athrun 4y ago> The point to watch out for is when the self-driving cars are the primary users, and the needs of human drivers start to fall away as not important any more. Yeah. I'm really not looking forward to streets being all fenced off to prevent us pesky humans from jaywalking and causing trouble to our robotic overlords.
- jaimex2 4y agoI think everyone has 'stop my robo vacuum getting stuck' stories. Anyone one got a some? Most of mine were solved with magnetic tape and furniture risers.
- SoftTalker 4y agoI simply do not keep a neat enough house to have a robot vacuum. There is too much stuff on the floor for it to get tangled up in.
- jimmygrapes 4y agoSame here. I'm waiting for the next generation that comes with a claw to pick up stuff and put it in a "miscellaneous item" box on the first round, then go about the vacuum/mop process.
- dugite-code 4y agoI used to be the same, but then I got the vacuum and it's amazing how good they really are at keeping the house clean, so I changed my habits and finally got around to doing all the necessary cable management. Also it's not just the floor, the whole house just has less dust in general when used regularly.
- fudged71 4y agoIt really depends on the vacuum. Mine doesn't have the sensors to know where it has been etc and gets stuck often. It doesn't save us any time but it does still get places that we wouldn't typically get to.
- theshrike79 4y agoAlways get a LIDAR model, the "bump into everything and guess where I am" -bots are generally useless. The LIDAR models can travel to a certain room, clean it and get back without any issues.
- dugite-code 4y agoSometimes I wish I had gone with a newer vacuum. I got the original Xaiomi vacuum and while it has the LIDAR it's lacking on the software side of things and "forgets" the map with every clean. Luckily I have root and installed valetudo on it so I can bypass most of the limitations using HomeAssistant https://valetudo.cloud/ https://valetudo.cloud/
- DavidSJ 4y agoThis post is not really about robot vacuums and laundry racks, but about how simple ideas can elude human beings for long stretches of time, and then in retrospect look obvious.
- javajosh 4y agoWhat's also really cool is that people are willing to share these small discoveries in a format (the web) that means they can help others. How many people's pain will be alleviated by this tip, and others like it, thanks to the simple impetus to share freely? (And, more darkly, when should you choose to keep it to yourself?)
- gpuhacker 4y agoI experienced this together with a friend while we were CS students. I went with him to a store to get several pieces of carpet. We needed each to be sized roughly about 1 meter by 3 or 4 meters. For some reason, both of us were quite worried about the long pieces not fitting in the car easily. Even when the person in the store had cut the pieces and they were on the floor in front of us we were looking puzzled at the lengths not fitting in the car. Then we were amazed to see our friendly salesperson stacking the pieces on top of eachother and rolling them up on the short end, creating a thick roll of carpet of about 1 meter long that would fit in the car without any issue. We were both laughing and feeling a bit ashamed that neither of us had thought of this simple solution and that we were really worried for nothing all this time.
- razodactyl 4y agoI suspect you were high… how high were you two… -_- LOL
- stavros 4y agoHaha, the simple explanation is usually correct.
- prawn 4y agoI think also, the idea that once you buy something in one configuration, it's a finished product that you can't change or improve afterwards.
- winrid 4y agoI have a full photo album of things Bob has gotten stuck on. Someday I'll publish it. It'd make a great calendar...
- fudged71 4y agoPlace a tiny calendar on the wall just above the vacuum's charging station, it would be hilarious
- dotancohen 4y agoWhy Bob and not Rob? One of those is short for "Robot".
- dugite-code 4y agoMy solution was to zip-tie lengths of black poster board to the legs. Worked very well for a long time. Eventually the vacuum did bend it a bit, but it's not *too* ugly.
- smabie 4y agoA drying machine should easily solve this problem
- Gigachad 4y agoAt the cost of a thousand dollars plus recurring energy bills.
- thfuran 4y agoThe energy bill difference is probably a lot less than you might think, at least for a lot of people. Anyone running a dehumidifier or air conditioner is going to be paying a large chunk of the cost anyways in recondensing the moisture back out of the air.
- nikanj 4y agoWhy dry your clothes for free and zero carbon footprint, when you can dry them with paid energy and shorten their lifespan in the process
- d2wa 4y agoIt takes up a lot of space in a small apartment.
- 8fingerlouie 4y agoGlad to see i'm not the only one solving problems that way :) My Roomba would get stuck under the radiator in the living room. It fits under one end, but aparently it's not completely level, so as it was doing it's edge routine it would gradually wedge itself stuck under the radiator. The solution was "simple" as 3D printing a couple of "stands" to place under the radiator where the Roomba fit and didn't fit. As for my Robot lawnmower getting stuck on the trampoline, i simply dug down the trampoline legs far enough to make the robot drive safely over them :)
- the_cramer 4y agoSo refreshing to see that others have this simple problem, too. Roombas really are like users. They will eventually find flaws and errors in your software, or, in this case, shoelaces and pieces of cloth lying on the ground. Other issues with the roomba: - plant raisers with thin wooden feet. - wine rack with low base/feet - ikea chair with low U-shaped feet. Especially when the roomba tries to return to station I also noticed that it has a hard time detecting dark/black surfaces. Probably it has to do with absorption of whatever kind of sensor wavelengths it uses.
- stinos 4y agoRoombas really are like users. Difference being that tools/tech/developers should ideally, and very often do, make users' lives easier. Whereas here it's partly the other way around: users having to come up with workarounds. Instead of the tool being fixed.
- nikanj 4y agoMy dining chairs are perfect roomba traps. It can effortlessly navigate into the space between the four legs, but somehow seems unable to just drive out in a straight line. If I forget to lift the chairs to the table before I turn the roomba on, it inevitably ends up bonking against the four legs of the chair. Every damn time.
- Tabular-Iceberg 4y agoIt’s a little sad to see 3D printing used for such trivial components, where you get all the weaknesses of a 3D printed part but none of the strengths. Here’s a free startup idea: a structural search engine for off-the-shelf parts. E.g. “show me all parts that fits around round tubing of this diameter and has a flat bit at the other end”.
- amelius 4y agoHa, I can't even find a pair of trousers with a given size in a nearby shop using a Google search.
- d2wa 4y agoPlus the whole problem of “the dimensions listed have no relation to real life measurements”.
- puzzlingcaptcha 4y agoIf you have some basic tools around this would be a 15-minute woodworking project.
- jve 4y ago- 15 minutes would be gathering the necessary tools and gathering at the workbench. - Some other 10 would be measuring and thinking how to do it - Then 15 minutes would be measuring, drawing, cutting and drilling. Oh, and I forgot I would need this tool, let's get it downstairs/from garage/house... - Finding out it doesn't fit perfectly you already lost 5 mins. And now if hole is too big, you create new one, +15 mins. If hole is is too small, you search for your sandpaper. Sand it + fit, sand it + fit... - Ahh, it broke, because wood was too thin. Retry. - Putting tools back, cleaning up your place +10 min Total: Little more than hour realistically :) /from a perspective of DIYer, how it usually happens with me.
- Tagbert 4y ago“ Some other 10 would be measuring and thinking how to do it” That is wildly optimistic :)
- Gordonjcp 4y agoA couple of dods of foam pipe insulation would have done the job even better, and made a non-slip non-scratch foot for it too.
- stadeschuldt 4y agoFor me the solution were simple clothespins.
- samrocksc 4y agoThis is the best article ever posted on hacker news....
- dheerajvs 4y agoDon't robot vacuums these days come with an app where you can specify no-go areas?
- unwind 4y agoI don't own a robotic vacuum, but two racks. They seldom end up in the exact same position every time, are frequently moved between rooms depending on state of drying, weather, and so on. Not to mention the kids. I can't imagine spending effort exactly mapping the location of a rack, a passive/permanent solution like the one in the article is just right.
- lostlogin 4y agoIt doesn’t matter where I put them in the Roomba app, it still ignores them. Then it goes out into the deck and makes a racket while it looks for things to get stuck in/on/over/under. I’ve remapped the house and the problem persists.
- aembleton 4y agoSome do, but not all of them. We have the cheapest Eufy one and it doesn't have no-go areas. I just lift wires and have screwed a piece of wood underneath the shoe rack where it sometimes gets stuck because the floor isn't level. The piece of wood stops it heading under there.
- noiv 4y agoAnd this is how AI changes human culture twine ball by twine ball.
- zcbenz 4y agoWhen I ordered my home 3 years ago, I chose furnitures that have bottom high enough to let a Dyson 360 pass, and carefully designed their layout so the robot can easily go from one room to the other without circling around or running into wires. The robot still got stuck from time to time, but the efforts were quite worth it. :)
- drakonka 4y agoI feel like there's been a kind of meta-discussion happening around the HN peripherals about laundry racks. I got a laundry rack for the first time after seeing a post about them here on the front page. Later, mentioning the laundry rack resulted in a thread of laundry rack recommendations of sorts. And now we've got a brand new post on the front page related to managing said laundry racks. I wonder how many people, like me, are reading this as new laundry rack owners who are learning to integrate their new low-tech laundry appliance into the rest of their high-tech home.
- fho 4y agoWe recently were gifted a DEEBOT OZMO T8 AIVI ... and while the hardware side works pretty flawless, the software side is just a major shitstorm. Like every time I open the control app the map looks different. So far I had the following problems: 1. The "split this room" feature does not work on two rooms that have been detected as one. I believe that that is due to the bot not recognising a central chimney as "not room". 2. While cleaning it detects the closed bathroom door as a wall and then does not path into there anymore. As far as I can tell this does not trigger any warning, the bot just drives back into the charging station after some time. 3. The position of the charging station was lost, which made the bot update the map in a weird way, superimposing where it thought it was skewed over the map. I feel like some of those problems could be fixed fairly easily if users had more control over the SLAM process. I.e. the ability to permanently fix walls in the map.
- patrickk 4y agoIf you’re lucky enough to have a model that supports Valetudo, reflashing the firmware with an open source alternative can alleviate some software problems: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25856788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25856788
- fho 4y agoNo ... sadly the bot is not supported. I recently saw an announcement of a "brain replacement" project for (a specific) robotic mowers ... such an "after market" project for robotic vacuums would be great. But replacing the electronics is definitely no easy feat.
- ama5322 4y agoIt's kind of interesting that this happens given how relatively old robot vacuums are nowdays. The robot getting wedged into high or low obstacles is a pretty common issue. The expensive robots added lidar sensors for better navigation, but the basic obstacle sensing mechanisms hasn't really improved: front/side sensor, bumper, + cliff sensors for falling (and these last ones aren't 100% foolproof either). A front camera doesn't really help these robots IMHO (roomba, cough). Nice gimmick, but unless you reach 99% reliability, you'll still see your robot squishing dog poop, falling, wedging itself into the sofa.. I guess it's a nasty tradeoff between robustness, service lifetime, and cost. I bought a cleaning robot a year ago (totally recommended btw), and I also went the route to adapt the furniture and placement of things to help the robot.
- DANK_YACHT 4y agoRoombas could definitely be better. Mine gets stuck all the time. The reason I keep using it, however, is that it cleans a lot of stuff prior to getting stuck, so it still feels worth it to me.
- daisoftware 4y ago[flagged]
- Theodores 4y agoSimple but controversial answer: don't use a vacuum cleaner. Depends on how many dogs, children and visitors you have. No need to 3d print parts to fix the first world problems. I do change my shoes at the door. It can be weeks before the dustpan and brush comes out. Or months for the mop. Otherwise, all is good. Cleanliness is maintained.
- d2wa 4y agoIt also depends on where you live, allergies, seasons, …
- joshka 4y agoA pool noodle from a dollar store might be an easier off the shelf option. :D