WYZE Robot Vacuum lidar

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My V2 cam caught the WYZE robovac mapping a room.

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That’s really cool! It’s interesting to see how the LIDAR detection works.

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That is cool to watch. But, I am still somewhat concerned about how the lidar could impact the eyesight of pets. Those dots are right at eye level of my little dogs when they are laying down in their crate.

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Looks very cool. I’m still unclear as to the point. I WANT my robot vacuum to try as much of the room as possible, including under things. I guess the mapping is a starting point for those who want to manually block pet dishes and such?

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@Customer As of right now there does not appear to a map editor, but you can setup “virtual walls”. Lots of discussion in this thread and pics of my maps during it’s maiden voyage to scan my primary floor.

But the robovac scanned my whole floor and went under everything it could. It was really precise.
In fact I shut a door after it scanned a small half bath, and the lil guy hung out in the area until I opened it again, as if it was saying oh no… I know there is space in there… let me scan it fully and clean it

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Okay thanks. But… Then what IS the point of the mapping? Simply to avoid going over the same ground twice? I kind of like that my “dumb” robot vacuum makes repeated random passes over the same areas. It can’t know just how dirty the floor is or how often it should spend in a given spot. What does the mapping add?

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I am new to the robovac world and this is my first, but the value I see from the mapping is that it creates a memory of the floor plan (it still scans with each cleaning). Once you have the map you can chunk the house up in “rooms” and set schedules for cleaning those rooms or spaces.

So Clean Dining Room every Friday at 10PM
LivingRoom at 1AM Every night
Or if you have a mess in specific location, go clean that location now.

Vs. sending the vac off to clean the whole space. Which in my case took 6-7 hours because it only ran for about 1.3 hours per charge.

To your point, there is no detection of “clean” that I am aware of on Day 2 of deploying.

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Thanks, that makes sense. Personally we just tell Alexa to send the vacuum out from its home under the couch and then we move it downstairs (or a different room) if needed. Our virtual barriers are doors. :slight_smile:

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Hope is that I will tell Alexa to send Home Vacuum to clean room X. :grin:

Haven’t gotten there yet and need the map editor because the mapper broke 1600 sq ft of an open floor plan to just a few “rooms” and the rooms aren’t well broke down.

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I think the point of mapping is that the vacuum will do a thorough job without running into your furniture at every turn. I have a few pieces of antique furniture that i dont want ruined by the vacuum like my ex-wife used to do.
My experience with this vacuum is all positive. It did loose its way a couple of times and sometimes wont connect to charger: I think due to thick piled carpet: but all in all packaged very well: like it was meant to be shipped overseas,lol: unboxed easy, setup easy, and is fun to watch technology that I used to watch on cartoons clean my carpet.

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Okay. But don’t you want to clean near the furniture too? My dumb robot vac is pretty ginger and bounces gently around things but I can understand your concern.

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It is a circle with a square cleaning head. I really didn’t expect it to do the edges that perfectly. This is my first automatic vacuum and it did just what i expected a round peg to do in a square hole. The hepa filter on this unit is more than expected. i run the vacuum every day just to examine its proficiency. No more cat hair on floor. Hmmm still some on me though. wyze are we gonna do something about that???

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update on mapping feature. I am on covid-19 lockdown so had some time. I set up some boxes in weird configuration and moved some chairs to see what it would do and moved the charging station to hard surface. It has navigated the first two rooms with ease and it found out that the charging station had moved within minutes. It starts with the perimeter and then does the span. The only problem i have is the the map shows a 3’ x 3’ area that has no access. I have remapped 3 times. Maybe the previous owner has blocked it off and hid a bunch of stuff in there. I will keep you posted when i drill a hole in wall and look.

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I’ve had a number of robotic vacuums over the years. All of them the random bump and turn variety. I’ve found these sorts of vacuums to be a breath of fresh air because unlike many standard vacuums, most robo vacs are designed to be user serviceable, even if a motor or wheel breaks.

I am in the beta program for the app and have the latest beta firmware installed. So if something I say doesn’t match your experience, this may be why.

I’ve had really good experience with the Wyze vacuum so far. Setup was a breeze and the initial mapping and cleaning went off without a hitch.

I have to say, I love the fact that you can specify rooms and edit the map when needed. It really makes it easy to clean.

The virtual wall feature has worked really well for me (though admittedly I don’t have the virtual walls set up in the middle of a room). I like it better than the old “beacon” lighthouse style of other vacs.

The vacuum cleans well if you remember to set the vacuum to strong suction. The strongest setting is still far quieter than a regular vacuum.

Even in pitch black, the vacuum rarely bumps into anything. I have no black marks on my walls as was common with the bump and turn vacuums I used to use.

The battery life is ok. My experience is that the vacuum tends to use a bit over 1% of battery life per minute of cleaning on strong suction mode. The vacuum has always successfully gone back to charge mid-cleaning if it gets to about 7% or so.

I like that the speaker that announces what is happening with the vacuum is loud and clear and actually says in English what is going on.

This is a small thing, but no other vacuum I’ve had had this feature: I like that the charging station power cord can be wound up and hidden inside the unit. That way there isn’t any cord for the vacuum to accidentally get stuck on.

Here are the things I’d love to see improved:

  • The vacuum is not great at detangling itself. No robo vac I’ve ever used has been perfect at this, but the Wyze vac will almost definitely get caught on smaller wires if it runs one over and the wire isn’t held firmly in place.

  • The dust bin is on the small side. Every other vac I had included a bin at least 1/3 bigger than Wyze’s. Cleaning performance is reduced when the bin is full, so having one that can make it through cleaning sessions even in a larger house would be nice.

  • The vacuum sometimes will suck up something (a piece of paper, a sock, etc.) that will more or less block the suction, but the vacuum won’t detect it and will keep trying to clean.

  • It doesn’t look right now like all parts can be easily replaced on this vac. I’d like to be able to replace the dust bin itself, the wheels and motor parts if needed. The vacuum is a great deal, but I’m not going to be happy if I have to throw it away and get a new one if a motor needs replacing.

  • I haven’t had the vacuum fail to recharge yet after about 10 uses, but it does seem really picky about the charging station. I had it make good contact 2 times and sit there for a bit and then move away and try to reorient itself. The charging station is in the open on level ground.

  • I’d like the “wall wart” to be inside the charging base rather than on the socket end. This would give the base more heft so it won’t move around and it wouldn’t block the other power receptacles.

So far, the vacuum had been great overall and I am happy with performance and the price. Good job!

I hope the plan is to start selling parts (like new batteries, brushes, filters, etc.) very soon.

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Had mine for a week now. It connects to my network just fi e, but won’t show up in the app. And the set up says failed to connect, but it did connect and pass my network information so the vac logs on to the network. Right now it is a trip Hazzard at best. What should happen after the vac logs into your home network. The instructions don’t say.

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I have a dumb robovac and a smart mapping one. I think the main advantage, besides the ones mentioned above is that my smart vac gets every inch of my floor. If you look at the path of a non mapping (random) vac you will find that it can go for an hour or longer and possibly not get every area, and probably get other areas several times. Plus, it is nice to be able to look at the map of my smart vac and have positive assurance that the complete area that you designated was indeed cleaned

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Fair enough, thanks.