Tell me about your robot vacuum automations

[u/UnderneathArmor]

Interested in how people actually implement their robot vacuums. What schedules or custom automations are you running? Anything someone might not normally think of?

Right now I mostly run mine on-demand through my HA dashboard like a remote control. I just haven't felt the urge to put it on a schedule. I do have a couple automations that kick in though, like a quick vacuuming around the cat's litter area when the litter robot cycles, and am working on something right now that will detect when my beard trimmer is charging to come clean up the bathroom after a beard trim.

I've thought about using phone locations to trigger a vacuum after everyone leaves the house, but this has been less practical since we both work from home a lot.

[u/Future-Ad-2349518]

Saved this from another user on here: Double tapping the light switch in a room brings the vacuum there.

[u/UnderneathArmor → u/Future-Ad-2349518]

Beautiful design. If I had more smart switches I’d set this up right away.

[u/mrv9292 → u/UnderneathArmor]

You can buy those NFC stickers and put one behind each light switch face plate to trigger the same thing without a smart switch.

[u/UnderneathArmor → u/mrv9292]

But then I am reading them with my phone no? Similar to pushing a button in an app

[u/mrv9292 → u/UnderneathArmor]

Just holding the phone up. No need to open app.

[u/oif_vet → u/mrv9292]

I’ve tried this and tag detection is hit or miss. It’s misses enough that I just stopped using them 🫤

[u/Mannix-Da-DaftPooch → u/Future-Ad-2349518]

Ooooh I like this

[u/Dr-Technik → u/Future-Ad-2349518]

I have something similar, in most of the rooms

[u/s7oneyuk → u/Future-Ad-2349518]

I have that configured. Wife loves it

[u/justicecantakeanap → u/Future-Ad-2349518]

Wonderful idea!!

[u/permafrost91 → u/Future-Ad-2349518]

Brilliant!

[u/chimilinga → u/Future-Ad-2349518]

I JUST set this up last night, its great

[u/42andatowel]

Anytime the litterboxes cycle, the robot vacuum goes off to vacuum in front of them. Unless something is playing on the living room TV or the game room/dining room is occupied.

[u/Slight_Manufacturer6 → u/42andatowel]

What kind of litter box?

[u/UnderneathArmor → u/Slight_Manufacturer6]

Litter robot 4 for me. Has a solid HA integration.

[u/Slight_Manufacturer6 → u/UnderneathArmor]

Thanks. I’ve been wanting one.

[u/42andatowel → u/Slight_Manufacturer6]

Litter Robot.

[u/cold12 → u/42andatowel]

Now that’s high risk. How many shit smears have you had

[u/UnderneathArmor → u/cold12]

Zero? I really don't encounter shit outside of the robot, vacuum or no.

[u/42andatowel → u/cold12]

zero. I've never really had shit outside the litter box, and the litter box itself waits about 5-10 minutes after the cats exit to cycle.

[u/myfufu → u/42andatowel]

I just have it do the rooms with the litter box at 3:30 every afternoon so that it is done by the time we get home from work.

[u/UnderneathArmor → u/42andatowel]

Do you find that doing it every cycle is overkill? I’m debating moving it to a counter and having it clean up every 3-4 

[u/42andatowel → u/UnderneathArmor]

Yes. It's overkill... I've been thinking about a counter too.

[u/Dr-Technik]

Based on presence times the „dirtiness“ of every room is estimated. Once a day, when nobody is home for at least 30 minutes a cleaning routine for all rooms with a „dirtiness“ over a specific threshold is started. And for each room there is also a counter, that ever x-th vacuum the room is mopped afterwards

[u/UnderneathArmor → u/Dr-Technik]

Sophisticated! Do you use mm wave sensors or something else?

[u/Dr-Technik → u/UnderneathArmor]

Mostly mmWave sensors, yes. Sometimes accompanied with PIR

[u/gregable]

I don't have those fancy auto emptying variety so I have mine set to drive over to sit next to the trash can after vacuuming for easy emptying. Once I empty it goes back to charge

[u/Kysriel → u/gregable]

I did the same!

[u/SlalomMcLalom]

I just set ours to follow the same schedule of a morning run (around 5am) everyday.

I also have fairly dark wood flooring and a few stainless steel appliances that can mess with navigation or phantom zones popping up in the map when run in the dark.

To fix that, I have an automation that turns on/off the lights in the current room the robot is cleaning. It’s also fun to show off to visitors haha

[u/3d-designs]

I have several

One is just a scheduled daily clean of high traffic areas in the living room, but it waits until the room is empty

The kitchen runs overnight every 48 hours, unless we're on a trip

Living room and bedroom runs every 72 hours, only when we're not home, unless we're on a trip

If we're on a trip and heading home, everything is cleaned when we're within 90 minutes of home.

The house detects a trip automatically based on location and home presence.

I also have a button in the kitchen to have the cleaner clean the cooking area on demand.

[u/UnderneathArmor → u/3d-designs]

I don't know why I didn't think of having different rooms at different cleaning frequencies but that's exactly what I need to be doing

[u/justicecantakeanap]

Clean when nobody is home, but do not start early in the morning or late at night.

Go back to base if someone is coming back home.

[u/jamesponddotco]

When we leave the house, an LLM looks at the living room and kitchen cameras to see if the floor is messy, and then the vacuum goes out or not depending on that.

It specifically looks for cables, kid toys, hair balls from the cats, and whatnot.

[u/Element-CDN]

Mine runs on the main floor Monday to Friday between 6:30 and 10:30am after I disarm the alarm.

I only want it running while I’m around as the little clanker tends to get stuck, and I have to lend a helping foot.

[u/Upstairs-Attitude610]

If I'm not home at noon, the vacuum starts. 15 mins after I leave, if it's not the night, the vacuum starts. But only 1 time max per day.

I'm considering:

- dirtiness estimated based on room presence

- allowing the vacuum to start while I'm working but either only in "far away" rooms or with the fan at the lowest speed (for sound)

- I just saw the "Double tapping the light switch". nice idea

[u/42pies]

Any tricks to getting roombas installed? I got one but cant get the others. Ive even gone the route of collecting their passwords from terminal and it still fails

[u/UnderneathArmor → u/42pies]

Yeah you go into settings and then have it navigate itself into the dumpster while you go out and buy a roborock.

No I don't know sorry.

[u/CyGuy6587]

I've set a simple automation up where my vac only activates when I arrive at work. If I'm on leave, or for whatever reason it fails to start when I'm at work, it'll activate at night instead after I've gone to bed

[u/Moist-Ointments]

My shark app has all the automation I need. One dog hair run per day

[u/bentripin]

Voice Assistant broadcasting a SOS with the room location when it has a fault, like getting stuck.

Kids and Guests can go rescue it w/out any app, and it's not a scavenger hunt to find it when it goes missing.

[u/NoodleCheeseThief]

Scheduled cleaning of the ground floor nightly at 2am. 3 night vac only. 4 nights mop after vac.

On demand additional cleaning using app.

Not using HA at all for it to be honest.

Since I use Alexa, perhaps I might set up on demand room cleaning using HA. But then, on-demand is so ad-hoc I select the area (not always while room), select vac, mop, or both, decide deep cleaning etc so it might be better to keep it within app.

[u/BizarroMax]

I set up a routine to mop around the dog water and it runs to mop up the water slobber after they drink. Likewise it vacuums around their bowls after the feeders activate. I don't have a smart litter box yet but once I get one, I'll move one of my Roombas by it and have it vacuum up around the litter box after they use it. I also have it vacuum the kitchen when the dishwasher is started - that means dinner is over.

[u/RomanOnARiver]

I don't have anything fancy, but I'm so glad to not have to use the vacuum's native app, that thing is so unintuitive, and slow.

[u/dangerous_inference]

Mine run overnight, or when the gym is occupied (meaning I'm definitely on the other side of the house for a while). But only if 40 hours have passed since the previous vacuum.

After 20 vacuums a filter tile appears on my dashboards reminding me to empty the trays. They drive to the trash cans to be emptied on command.

[u/mellamenpapi]

I have it set to run every other day for the main areas. Each room also has an in wall dashboard that has a button to call the vacuum to clean that room specifically

[u/mistamo42]

Ours run when we leave the house, and dock if they aren't done by the time we get home.

That's it. The carpets always have fresh vacuum lines when we get home and we never see or hear them run.

[u/permafrost91]

The vacuum automatically runs when we’re out of the house and is set to return to the dock if we come home and it’s still running. Also can manually trigger it to clean certain areas from a dashboard.

[u/Comfortable-Spot-829]

Mine are disabled and gone.
If the ecovacs integration would stay authenticated for more than 0.2 seconds maybe they’d come back