The robotic household - autonomous vaccumcleaner - roborock S5 max [Tutorial]

As most people do, I absolutely hate loosing time on keeping my flat in shape. It's time-consuming, exhausting, and really lasts not long enough for the effort it takes. Luckily, we life in a modern society and learned to design technologies for all this nasty tasks . So it shouldn't be a surprise, that at some point I decided to buy a autonomous vacuum-cleaner to get rid of that problem. It was no question that I wanted a model that not randomized drives through the rooms until it hits something, but can scan the room and recognize  objects. This method of first creating a map of the room and then cleaning it in a structured way provides the advantages of a faster and more accurate cleaning with less blind spots. Also, if the software supports it, you can tell the robot to only clean a special area or room. Luckily, my partner already had a big knowledge in what brands and price ranges (yes, you can pay everything from 200€ to a 1000€ for such a household) would fit my demands. So, after a few more researches, I decided to give the S% max from Roborock a try. The first deal I made on amazon was a warehouse deal and… let's make it short: they send me a wrong model that wasn't in the shape as they offered it to me and so I had to send it back and made another deal of a factory new one for 10 bucks more… which still got me the device for more than 25%  off the normal price, at the point of this article around 600€. After all this trouble, I received the following gear within the box:

 

• Roborock S5 Max with watertank installed
• Mopping module for mopping mode
• Charging- and homestation
• Power cord for the station
• Plasticsheet for the robot to rest on
• Instruction papers

 

The robot itself, has a little turret on it's top in which the laser sits, that scans the environment for obstacles. On the front half sides are bumpers that give the robot the information if he hits something. On the right side (as the robot cleans turning in right cycles, a little rotating brush catches the dust out of the corners. Also sensors search for obstacles ahead, as well as a sensor underneath the robot scans for edges the robot could fall off from. On the top of the front half, a power and a home button can be found.

 

On the back half, underneath the watertank is accessible and the mop can be installed. On the top, a little hatch can be opened to remove the dustbin to empty it. Also, a reset button and control led can be found here. 

 

Alright, let's get to install the station and fire it up! My flat really could need a cleaning session! :S

 

1. Install the homestation 

First step is to find your robot a spot where he can sit, charge and wait for its operation. It should be easy to enter and exit for the robot, in the best case in a central room and you shouldn't fall over your new buddy. Also, the charger should be placed backwards against a wall, so the robot can't push it around. 

 

 

When found a spot, clean the floor, place the homestation with the flat backside against the wall, peal of the protection sheet from the glue stripe on the stations bottom and glue it tight. Then plug the power cord in. 

Last, also clean the area in front of the station, peal of the protection sheet from the glue stripes on the bottom of the transparent plasticsheet and place it with the gap around the homestation. Tie it to the ground by putting a little pressure on it for about 10 second. 

 

  

2. Get the robot started

 

Next, place the robot front facing onto the charging station and press the power button until the device reacts. 

 

3. Install the app

 

Now head over to the app- or android playstore and download the  "Roborock" app. First, as always, you have to create an account and afterwards, the app will lead you into setting up your first device. 

 

On the first step, choose the device you want to install and connect to your target WIFI. 

 

Then, wait until the app uploaded all the information onto the robot and the device is connected to your network.  

 

When finished, open the device menu from the homescreen and update the firmware of your robot. At this point, I pass you my common pleading of why software updates are so important and so on… If you wish, you can also change the name of your device here. 

 

 
4. First environment scan

 

From the home interface, click on "edit map", choose "create new map", read the instructions and then click on "create". 

 

The robot then starts driving around and scans for the shapes of the rooms and obstacles. This can take some time and battery, as the robot needs to orientate. 

 

 

 

5. Finalizing the map

 

When done, the app tries to identify different rooms and mark them in different colors. The white lines show the route the robot took during it's last cleaning session. Now, we can finalize the map by adding custom information. For example, add zones the robot should not clean, or not clean while in mopping mode (carpeting for example), as well as splitting rooms by hand and defining the order in which the rooms should be cleaned. All this can be done again in the "edit map" section. 

 

 

6. Google home integration 

 

Finally, as I'm lazy a.f., I don't want to open the app to get my robot clean the house. I wanna just talk to him. Because the device itself can't react to voice control, but listen for commands in the network and my google nest can hear me and send commands on the network, let's integrate the my smart vacuum cleaner into my google home.

First, open the google home app, click on the little plus symbol in the upper left corner and in the upcoming menu, choose the second option.

 

Then search for "Roborock". Log in with your roborock account and choose your robot to get added to the room you placed him in.

 

 

That's it, your robot now should appear in the dashboard section of the room you defined him in. 

 

Now you can say things like "Start Robotname" and your google home will sent your new household to work.

Good to knows: the robot can recognize carpet and adapts to it. When the robot gets stuck for to long, he cancles cleaning and waits for you to free him.

 

In my test so far, I couldn't notize any reasonable blank spots, the battery can hold more than three cleaning sessions and in mopping mode I really like that the floor is good "mopped", but to wet so it damages the ceiling.

So I hope this little guide helps getting started if you also want to kill timeconsumpting processes with smart technologies. What do you think of todays little helpers for your every day tasks? Would you buy yourself a vacuum cleaning robot? Why or why not or do you maybe already have one in use? Tell me down in the command section!

TOP 5 - All-time Mobile phones I used

It's time for another TOP 5! Today, lets look at the top 5 mobile phones I ever used!

5. Huawei P9

To Huawei I more or less came by accident. I had used iPhones for a bit of time but every new generation that came out got more and more expensive and I wasn't able and also willed to pay this anymore. So at some point, even I was so used to the "Apple Way of doing things" with mobile systems, I decided to switch back to android. However, because the human species is a creature of habit, I searched for something that gives me a "feel" kinda like the apple systems at this time. Lucky for me, Huawei was taking effort to appear as the chinese apple and so when my uncle offered me to take over his Huawei P9 (a flagship model) for a really good midrange price, I couldn't deny that. The P9 is such a special phone to me, because I think it's the one I had for the longest time and was allways happy with it, compared to all the other smartphone. It just got retired one day because the already replaced battery started to struggle again and the hardware couldn't keep up with the more and more complex software.

4. Nokia 5000

THIS phone deserves a place in here because it was my first phone ever. Yes, it already had a camera and backlighted keys but... compared to where we went, it is quiet a different age of technologie. And I guess, it maybe was part of the beginning of my technical interest. While others used it mostely to terrorize their friends with tons of sms and mms, because at some point every one had a flat to do so, I was faszinated by how all the programs inside this little thing could work. Having a device to share pictures and mp3 files via bluetooth on the schoolfloor was the biggest thing to me. It kinda woke up my interest in improving technologie. Because who could have knew what else was and is possible.

3. Iphone 5s

This was the iPhone I kinda used for the longest time and I still have it in my "techbox" as a backup if my actual phone crashes. It was worthy its price and was the phone so far that was running most stable and had the best physical feeling. Some times, I wish the time back when it was possible to fit the whole phone in a womans pants pocket... I also was the phone I first started to use as a mobile device for productive use, as I had a english dictionary installed or used it to take quick notes on the homework I got. 

2. OnePlus Nord

This one is my actual phone in use at the time of this article. And for me it kinda stands out because it comes with some "new era technologie. Byside the fact that it supports the new mobile standard "G5" it comes with a fingerprint sensor under the screen, 12 GB of RAM and also it brings back to me something I missed since I switched from iPhones: the physical notifications switch. Also, with around 500€ of costs, the Nord is a really fair deal for what comes with it and I was comfortable with it, quite from the first day. To be honest, I would not be surprised if it beats the Huawei P9 in its position as my "longest time in use"-phone.  

1. Iphone 4 

Maybe a surprise for some folks, this one leads the list for more or less one reason: it is the MOST STABLE smartphone ever! As I work with horses, my phones have to deal with a lot of violation and so one day, the iPhone 4 was sent to the floor by accident and before I could reach out to pick it up, a around 500 kilograms horse decided to place it hoof on it. I was shocked. Approximately 125 or more kilograms took place on the edge of this phone... After I could free it from the horses hoof and inspect it I was... lets say impressed and releafed... Not a SINGLE scratch was new on the device, the glass wasn't broken and the fram had only a little notch but wasn't noticely bend. I don't know how much luck I had but this makes the iPhone 4 the top smartphone I ever used.

The central controllunit - tying it all together with Google Nest Hub [Tutorial]

Because I'm not only into smarthome stuff but also kind of into security, my mobilephone, which I certainly used as the  central controller for my smarthome setup, was configured to only execute commands on hardware when it is unlocked. This way I wanted to avoid the problem of someone eles accidentally or by purpose controlling something on my smarthome when I'm on the go. 

And by all the more security this provides, it kind of kills the "I can controll my home without using my hands" - thing because I still had to unlock my phone every time. First I thought of the idea to configure my smartphone so execute commands without beeing unlocked as long as the GPS says I'm at home, but at least on the german version of google home and google assistent I wasn't able to find the option to configure this. At least not as a natively implementation. Also, GPS kan easily be mocked but that's kind of another thing. 

So the solution that was left in my mind was a device that never leaves my flat, so it doesn't need the "locked"-feature. And oh surprise, the google Nest Hub smartspeaker is just what I was thinking about. In general, this little device is not more than a speaker with a little display that connects via wifi to your google home account stored on the servers of google and takes it's config and all informations from there as my smartphone does too. But... The google Nest Hub is designed to be a device with a fix place to rest and because it is especially made for the use of controlling a smarthome environment, it does some of this tasks way better as the mobile app does. For example listening and understanding my commands throws way less errors because the hardware is designed to hear you from every position in the environment then a mobilephone which's microphone is mor specified to get clear input when you are right next to it. 

So I decided to give the google Nest Hub a trie and made a good deal in buying a brand  new one from a family member who made me a good offer. 

The installation and integration is fairly easy but let's see what we can find in the box an go through the initial steps together!

Within the minimalized box (I was surprised how smal it really is, looks bigger on pictures) we find the hub, some informationpapers and the powercorde.

The hub's stand, wraped in fabric, also holds the speaker inside. On top of this, we have the slightly tilted 7" touchscreen which comes with the microphone and light-sensor integrated in its top frame. Back left on the frame we find a physical volume addjustment button as known from nearly every common phone. On the top sitts a leaver that clames to activate or deactivate the listening functinality, so the hub respons to the "OK Google" hot-key and finally on the bottom right corner, we find the entry for the powercord. With this minimalistic design, the Hub has an elegant look and tends to vanish in the environment. Same counts for the power cord, which is just a simple white cable and a flat plug without any fancy additions. 

Installing and setting the Hub up is a really easy process, as the device does the most things on its own and otherwise talks you through. And this makes it a perfect device to start with if someone is new or a little insecure around smarthome-technologie.

1. Remove the protection-sheet

The Hub's touchscreen is protected with a transparent sheet that has the Google "G" printed on the middle of it. Peal it off. You can't really damage something. Anyways it should come off without much violation. 

2. Plug in the powercord

Plug the small end of the powercord into the Device and the other side to an outlet in of your house electric network. 

The device should automaticly start up when it receives power. Wait a moment while it boots up. 

3. Download or open the Google Home APP

When finished booting, the device will prompt you to download the google Home App. This app will function as your central configuration software for everything in your smarthome setup. 

So we go open the playstore, search for "google home" and download the app, make sure it says that google is publisher of this app, so you don't accidentally download a third party ones. 

 

If you have the app already downloaded, you can just skip this step and go on to the next one.

4. Add a new device

Next, we wanna add the Nest Hub to our home. If you don't created a home so far, the app will first guide you to do so. To add a new device, first klick on the "+" in the top left corner:

Click on "Add device": 

And then on the first option, since it's a google produced device:

Since you can have multiple homes, choose the one you want your device to be added: 

5. Connect to the Hub

At this point, the software starts scanning for unconfigured devices arround. When found, it askes if you want to configure it. Click "yes":

To ensure that you are configuring the right device, and not your neighbours ones who's trying to do the setup right now as well (for sure :), your Hub generates a code on the screen that should also be shown in the app. If not so, cancle and go back to the device scanning. If everything looks good, again confirm with "yes": 

The device then gets connected to your home. As you can see, there is quite no chance to make something wrong.

6. Configure the Hub 

Alright, basically, the Hub works with your home now, but google askes you for some more configuration. 

First they ask you for the permission to use additional data for analysis. Well, this might help them to work on the product to make it function better, but since these data is not required for the device to fully work as promissed and is located in my very personal space, I allways denie data analysis like this: 

Next up, they give you some information about what it means to work with the google assistent. If you never used it befor, you probably wanna read through it and the move on: 

 

If you have more than one person in your home, or don't want visitors to be able to access all your data via voice controll, you also wanna configure voice match. Google then can provide you personalized information like your next appointments from your calander. Another person of your home would instead get their own calender entries shown. To do so, google will help you setting a voice-profile up. If you already use voice match with assistant on another device, it will skip this and work with the existing profile: 

Following are some personalization settings you are free to do as your personal perferences are: 

Set you favorite music source:

Streaming service: 

Calls via Google Duo ( I personally disabled ist, because in my country it's more or less no used):

The idle-screen (I got with the simple clock): 

Finally, it askes you to subscribe to the newsletter of google products (well if you do so depends on how board your inbox is I guess) and then gives you a summary of the settings you just did:

7. Update to the latest software patch

When it's done with all the previous steps, it takes a final step and updates to the latest software. You should allways keep especially devices like that on the latest software, because it secures you against known vulnerabilities and bugs:  

 

 

When done with all that steps, the nest takes you on a little indroduction trip and shows you all the functionallities and how to access them. Take a few minutes to learn to use your device: 

The Hub will now also show you how to change volume and microphone sensibility. 

For more configuration, the device now also showes up in the Home app: 

 

The Google Nest Hub is now ready to use and so far, I'm not able to find any big problems with it. I have a two and a half-room flat and as long as I don't wanna here music in every room, I can interact with that one device without problems even from around two corners. The only thing I wasn't able to fix is, that when I say the key word to the Hub and my phone is around, it also gets activated. The Hub then overtakes the conversation so the phone goes back to inactive mode, but it would be a better solution to be able to deactivate the phone when for example the gps says it's at home. Also, I don't wanna compleatly deactivate the assistant on my phone, because I use it as the "boardcomputer" for multimedia when driving e.g.  

Over all, the Nest Hub is now ready for use and all the details is what you have to and best can discover on your own. If you have questions, comment them down. This is just a really simple tutorial because most of this works nearly failsafe. But I guess it's a good startingpoint from where now, more complex tutorials can evolve.