My new Dreametech L10s Ultra has been great so far and it does fine on my main floor (with the base station) and in my basement. But when I take it to my 2nd floor, it positions correctly and says “start cleaning”, but then it spins once and says “please return robot to the base station”. It already successfully mapped the 2nd floor.
Has anyone experienced this? Why does it sense where it is and begin cleaning, but then immediately stop and need the base station? It’s done it numerous times. The battery is fully charged, the mop pads are cleaned and dried.
Thanks for any assistance or ideas.
Not related to Homeassistant.
You’re correct! But there’s not a Dreametech or robot vacuum community, and I’m sure some people that use Home Assistant also use robot vacuums and might have some insight to offer.
As it turned out, the problem was that this particular robot is smart enough to know it shouldn’t start cleaning a floor without a base station if it’s going to have to dump it’s dirty mop water and refill with clean water, but it’s not smart enough to simply turn off the mopping function and just vacuum - you have to do that manually.
For me it’s the opposite.
I want my data NOT to get sent into all kinds of foreign clouds and servers.
Therefore I am using HA. It keeps my data locally.
And for the same reason I avoid all kinds of ‘phone home’ devices. Robot vacuums are the perfect ‘phone home’ devices. They spy not just your WiFi but also how your home looks like, every inch and every cm.
On Dreame robot vacuums you can actually flash your own firmware like Valetudo which is also quite popular in Home Assistant peers since it no longer phones home
It’s not really firmware, its a software solution that blocks it from phoning home. It still behaves the same.
That’s good news!