Wow, Mike must really have a thing for Robo Vacuums, I wonder if he could have a Robo Vac war or something, sounds like he has enough of them to wage a serious battle 🤣
Years ago I bought a top of the line Neato model for my Mom after she had hip replacement surgery and while she did use it for a while, she said it had many more issues than it seemed to be worth it. It got stuck quite often and it was never able to finish on a single charge even though my parents' house is not huge, about 1,300 or 1,400 square feet but with a few maybe tricky corners and with both smooth floors and rugs and my Mom said it often got quite confused, maybe also because of the very high ceilings in the living room. But at times she said it spent 15 minutes going over and over the same small area as if it was stuck on some sort of loop. She also said she had to spend a lot of time cleaning its brushes and making sure it was clean in general and while I am sure there are maybe better models out there now, I have so far no desire to try one of these things even though I am a bit of a gadget person. We have hardwood floors throughout the upstairs of our house and tile in the kitchen, bathroom and down the stairs, downstairs it's cork flooring in the guest room and family room and tile in the hallway, but it's just so easy to plug in the hose of the central vac and it's powerful and always works without a fuss. To each their own I guess. Best regards, Sieghard -----Original Message----- From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of Kay Malmquist Sent: Saturday, July 16, 2022 5:23 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: Roomba I will be interested in what you think. I also saw Mike's review and thought seriously about buying the Roborock. Do you have any recommendations as to the best place to buy one? Years ago, I had two Roomba's, one for downstairs and one for up. I liked them and miss them for the in-between vacuum jobs they did. Kay Malmquist [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Worrying does not empty tomorrow of its troubles, it empties today of its strength. Corrie Ten Boom - 1892-1983 - Watchmaker ----- Original Message ----- From: "Christopher Chaltain" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> To: <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Sent: Saturday, July 16, 2022 5:35 PM Subject: RE: Roomba A few weeks ago Mike Arrigo <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> posted the following review of several robot vacuum cleaners. I used this myself, and just a few minutes ago, we let our Roborock start it's maiden voyage around our house. I remember a while back there was some discussion about the accessibility of apps that are used to control robot vacuums. I now have a small robot vacuum collection and have tried each brand's app so I have an idea about which apps work the best with Voiceover. Some are definitely better than others. I'm going to group these in to three categories, accessible or mostly accessible, that is, everything is well labeled or at least easy to use with Voiceover's recognition abilities, useable but not the most accessible, meaning you can use the app but some of the controls are not labeled and you will have to memorize the order of where they are on the screen, and mostly unuseable, that is, you will need sighted help to do at least some things in the app since they are impossible to do using voiceover. One other thing to note, many robots will map your house and let you define rooms or no go zones by drawing on the map. Unfortunately there is no way to do that using Voiceover with any of these apps and I'm not even sure how that could be made accessible since it involves drawing, so your choices are to get sighted help if you want to use those features or just let the robot clean the entire place each time which is what I do. Ok, let's start with the most accessible category, these are in no particular order. The Irobot home app is used for the Roomba robots and works very well with Voiceover. For the most part, everything is well labeled, there are a few places where voiceover has to guess at what a control is but it does describe those controls well. I had no problems setting up my Roomba J7 Plus totally without sighted help. This app is very interactive which I like, at times it will display tips and tricks or ask you how the robot did on its last run and this is all completely accessible. If you decide you want to get a Roomba you will have no trouble at all using the app. Next up is the Roborock app. As a side note, I think Roborock is one of the best, if not the best brand of robot vacuums available, their cleaning and navigation is excellent. I discovered something with this app, I actually have two different Roborock models and the controls read slightly differently depending on which robot you choose to control from the home screen. This makes me wonder if the app is actually downloading this content from the robot itself. Either way, the app is very easy to use and navigate with voiceover. So, depending on which Roborock model you choose to get, things may read slightly different. For example, when I open the entry for the Roborock S4 Max and come to the settings option, Voiceover says "settings." On the other hand, when I choose the Roborock S7 Max V, which is Roborock's current top of the line model and one that I would absolutely recommend, the settings option says "possibly games, more." Once you know that this opens the settings screen for the robot it works fine. One other minor quirk about how the app reads, while in the settings screen, if you turn a setting off, Voiceover says "off," but when you enable a feature, rather than saying "on," Voiceover says "Open." Changing the cleaning settings such as the suction power and mop intensity works fine. On both the Irobot and Roborock apps, reading the battery level and robot status works fine. The Irobot app will indicate if the battery is high, medium or low, where as the Roborock app indicates the battery level as a percentage. The next app I will mention is the Eufy Home app. Eufy is a brand made by Anker which is known for their power banks and battery chargers. Eufy makes a line of robot vacuums called Robovac. Again, this app works well with Voiceover. Getting my Robovac X8 connected to my network worked fine and the controls for starting and stopping the robot, as well as changing the suction power are completely accessible. I prefer to run my robots on maximum power, I figure if the robot has the power available, why not use it for a better clean? One minor quirk about this app, there is no way that I know of to read the battery level, you can tell if the robot is charging or fully charged but that's all. Now we will move on to the second category. I currently only have one app in this category, the app is useable but not as easy to use since many of the buttons are unlabeled. The Trifo app fits this category. I have the Trifo Lucy pet edition robot and this app is used to control it. This app uses a different method to set up the network connection. With most other robots, you enter your WI-FI network name and password in to the app and then you connect your phone to a temporary network that the robot creates and the app uses this to transfer the network information to it. With the Trifo robots, you enter the network information and the app creates a QR code that is displayed on your phone's screen. You hold your phone's screen in front of the robot and the robot's camera reads the QR code. I was able to get this to work without sighted help but I had to turn off the screen curtain feature of Voiceover. This app has a lot of buttons that are unlabeled so Voiceover just says "button." The most important buttons, the start and stop cleaning button and the button to return to the dock are unlabeled as well as the buttons for map management and the button to change the suction setting. I was able to figure out what each button does after some experimentation but I definitely want to contact Trifo about this and hopefully they will label these buttons appropriately. Changing the suction to maximum works fine once you get to the right screen, it's a percentage slider and I set mine to 100 percent for the highest setting. Ok, now on to the remaining two apps that I have tried, I had to get sighted help at different points in order to get these apps to work. Let's start with the MII home app, this app is used to control several different robots made by Dreametech and a few other brands. I have the Dreametech L10 pro, creating an account and connecting the robot to my network worked fine so again, I'm wondering if the app is downloading the screens that are displayed from the robot itself once it's connected, regardless it ends up the same. It's possible to get in to the settings screen but when toggling options, it reads very strangely. The check box that you need to double tap on to toggle each option is after the option description and when you enable it, voiceover doesn't say anything, when you disable it, voiceover says "plate." I had to get sighted help to figure this out and I also needed sighted help to set the suction power to maximum, you can get in to the cleaning settings screen but Voiceover does not see the control for changing the suction power at all, apparently it's a circle with each setting shown as a larger fan, totally nonstandard. Once everything is set, you can read the battery level and start and stop cleaning but even with this control you can tell that Voiceover is guessing at what it is, it's not labeled. When swiping through the screen, sometimes Voiceover does not say anything. For these reasons I am considering this robot to be one of the least accessible when using Voiceover though it does clean well. The last app I will talk about is the Neabot app used to control the Neabot Q11, again a very good robot as far as cleaning goes, but this is the least accessible robot vacuum app I have used. I had to get sighted help several times. First, creating an account is not possible without sighted help because there is no way to access the Register" item. Voiceover says "don't have an account yet? Register" and it sees that as one item when it should be two items. Double tapping does not work so you have to get sighted help to tap on "register" with Voiceover turned off. After that creating the account works fine and connecting the robot to the network can be done without sighted help but once that is done, you really start to see the accessibility issues. You can read the battery level and the "Start cleaning" option works fine, but everything else is either completely unlabeled or even when Voiceover tries to guess what something is, the descriptions are not very helpful. With lots of patience you can get in to the main robot settings screen which is where the firmware update option is, and this also has problems. When there is a firmware update, Voiceover sees the text describing the update, the cancel, and the update options all as one item, this should be three. I was able to update the firmware by turning Voiceover off and tapping towards the bottom right of the screen but I think I was just lucky enough to tap in the right place. Also, setting the suction to maximum required sighted help, Voiceover does not see the control for changing the suction power at all. I have contacted Neabot about these issues and never got a response. So to finish this review, at this time the most accessible robot vacuum apps I have tried are from Irobot, Roborock and Eufy. All of these brands are good but Roborock is my favorite because of its excellent cleaning and navigation. -- Christopher (AKA CJ) Chaltain at Outlook -----Original Message----- From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, July 16, 2022 2:53 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: RE: Roomba Yep iPhone app is accessible and it can be controlled by Google home or Alexa. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of Mary Anne Lynskey Sent: Saturday, July 16, 2022 1:02 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Roomba Good afternoon everyone. I am curious. Have any of you experience using a Roomba? I recently ordered one from Amazon which has not arrived yet. I am wondering if this is a viable option for someone who is totally blind. How accessible is the app and how difficult is it to set up the app and use it. I know it can be controlled via the a lady. Any feedback appreciated. Thanks and everyone have a wonderful day. Mary Anne Sent from my iPhone -- The following information is important for all members of the V iPhone list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your V iPhone list moderator is Mark Taylor. Mark can be reached at: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. 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