Tapo RV30 Plus - Abnormal cleaning algorithm behaviour & scheduling issues & feature requests

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Tapo RV30 Plus - Abnormal cleaning algorithm behaviour & scheduling issues & feature requests

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Tapo RV30 Plus - Abnormal cleaning algorithm behaviour & scheduling issues & feature requests
Tapo RV30 Plus - Abnormal cleaning algorithm behaviour & scheduling issues & feature requests
2023-06-29 23:06:50 - last edited 2023-06-29 23:29:10
Tags: #Feature Request #Abnormal Behaviour
Model: Tapo RV30 Plus  
Hardware Version: V1
Firmware Version: 1.1.7

Hi,

 

Have raised this thread in order to highlight the issues, that I, as a customer, am experiencing. This thread isn't to blame and ruin the product, it is to highlight the issues so that they can be looked at from real world examples and fixed.

 

I have chosen carefully after having done extensive research into vacuum robots, having bought one earlier from other brand with dissapointment, and TP-Link is the only one I have come to trust that can execute this like their other products and Tapo line, and support it long-term, both the hardware and software.

 

I really enjoy this RV30 robot with auto-empty dock so far, but few functions are missing, abnormal and very important one for me, the scheduling, not working properly.

 

Let me get the issues out of the way first:

 

1) Scheduling, the most important for me does not work 95% of the time. I have got technical reply to this from TP-Link support via email, that the cause of it was a bad reset or powered it off incorrectly. To me this doesn't sound like its the customers job, the robot and the app need to work together in resolving any outstanding issues without human interaction, wether it is a bad shutdown or not. I have factory reset this robot and connected it to three different WiFi networks, my private LAN and guest which have internet access, and IoT which doesn't.

 

I always connect these devices to my IoT, and one of my decisions in buying this robot was because of its LAN only mode, meaning no internet access just direct control over the LAN wireless connection, which works. One of the respones I got is that Tapo devices do store scheduling, and I know this because I have four Tapo P100 sockets, which on my IoT work perfectly with scheduling, however my schedules for the RV30 is failing.

 

I got it to work few times in the first schedule, but the following attempts it doesn't do anything. I have as of writing this today, reconnected and mapped everything again, but the scheduling still hasn't triggered at the time I requested it. For now, i am tired of factory restarting the robot a dozen times, so will wait until a solution, not a guess has been provided.

 

2) Abnormal cleaning/travel algorithm, and just maybe mapping too. This one is a weird one and I got a feeling the cause of the issue is the update to latest firmware as of today, which is 1.1.7. When I got the robot unboxed and let it do its mapping, it done it flawleslly, that also included the cleaning, it went edge to edge of the room first, then into the center, straight zig-zag lines, was very nice upgrade from the last robot vacuum attempt... However, recently, not sure what has been going on, please see screenshots for the abnormal cleaning behaviour. The robot seems to start off fine, but at some points, in perfectly normal and empty areas, the robot avoids them, and creates these horrible circly spots, which ruins the whole smooth zig-zag cleaning behaviour, very noticable when in mopping mode. I have attached the following screenshots in order, to let you know of the map and the real location.

 

 

 

If I could somehow test the previous firmware on the robot, then I could confirm it back, but don't think downgrades are possible on my end.

 

3) Trouble connecting over IoT (non-internet network): After a little while it seems like the robot goes to sleep, and face issues with "network unstable" and the robot appearing offline, then at random times it connects back up just fine. Only faced this issue when directly connected over a private LAN without internet access.

 

 

 

Now onto the feature requests

 

  1. Carpet zones: Have not seen a robot vacuum map out a carpet by itself yet, I know Roborock does detect the carpet, and the S7 series even has a lift option of the mop, but the price point is also a big thing, so am not going to compare that part. There should be a seperate option to map out carpet(s), either automatically the robot goes through the mapped area and using its "carpet boost technology sensors", figures out that there is a carpet in that area, and does a forward and back, to figure out where the edges are, and maps it out in the app to see and use as a "carpet zone" to avoid mopping that area. Or, we should have the option to map out the carpet using remote control and creating a pin map of all the corners of the carpet. Because currently I have to create my carpets as rooms, which is a tad time consuming and inncarute. Another but more simple approach would be zoning the carpets permanently, something similar to No-Go Zone squares, but specifically for carpets since we could actually see the measurament of the box in meters.

     

     

  2. Room zones joint for cleaning: As in above, I have created rooms for my carpets, so they do not have the mop spraying water there. Thing is I set my schedule to one day vacuum, another day mop, and when it is mopping, I have it set to avoid the carpet room zones. However, when it is doing vacuuming I would like it to treat the carpet rooms and the room itself as one room, so it doesn't vacuum the areas individually since they are in the same area, which currently just ruins the zig-zag pattern across the whole room.

  3. Carry over map between factory resets: Fairly basic, sometimes factory reset might be needed on the robot. Instead of having to map everything over again, the last profile should be saved and applied to the robot once setup again.
  4. Improvement to the cleaning pattern algorithm: Zig-zag is a fine pattern and used widelly for cleaning robots, however I find it lacking in its decision making. Sometimes in narrow corridor, instead of calculating cleaning algorithm for different areas within the same room, currently it seems to be fixed to the whole room zig-zag pattern. Noticable when it goes from large open space, into a small corridor, as it sweeps wall to wall dozens of times, instead of rotating its zig-zag path towards the furthest point in that area, and doing a few sweeps. If a new pattern could be added, I would recommend finding the largest open area in the room and set it as center point, then from furthest point in the room clean in spiral, similar to spot cleaning but for the whole room, bring all the dust crumbs into the center of the room.
  5. No-Go Zone Virtual Wall splines & circular zones: Splines, or pin-point based virtual walls which would allow to in a single instance create a custom border around multiple objects, instead of having to play around in creating seperate virtual walls and trying to join them together. Along with having a circular No-Go Zone around flower pots and whatnot. While obstacle detection does work with most objects, reason for this change would be to clean as much space as possible whilst avoiding areas with dangerous items that can be entangled into the robot, good example is charing cables, I am requesting all of these from experience.

 

 

 

 

 

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#1
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7 Reply
Re:Tapo RV30 Plus - Abnormal cleaning algorithm behaviour & scheduling issues & feature requests
2023-06-30 12:33:04

  @Mandas 

 

Thank you for providing such a detailed problem report and valuable product suggestions. We appreciate your efforts in reaching out to our technical support team. I want to assure you that we have forwarded your case to our senior engineers who will assist with the product issues you encountered.

 

When the robot vacuum connects to a local-only wireless network, device time is obtained by synchronizing phone time during the configuration. If the device experiences a power loss or restart, it can result in time inconsistencies and affect the proper execution of scheduled tasks.

 

Did you verify whether the device time is successfully synchronized after reconfiguration? Several factors can prevent the schedule from functioning correctly, you might want to check to see if there was a relevant situation at the time.
1. Battery level is below 20%.
2. If the robot vacuum is already engaged in a cleaning task, it will be unable to execute the scheduled task.
3. Do Not Disturb mode is ON.

 

As for the new feature requests, I'll pass them to the product team for evaluation. About the carpet zone, based on my knowledge, the implementation of the carpet zone and the carpet-related feature should mainly rely on the "carpet boost technology sensors". A simple additional map for the carpet area probably won't have much impact on the vacuum's cleaning ability. Despite the increased suction power, cleaning carpets may still be less effective compared to cleaning regular wooden or marble floors.

 

Keep an eye on the device firmware release or official website to learn if there is any new feature added. Reply to the support ticket or update the information here if you need assistance with the product problem. 

Landscape Mode - Tapo App for PadShare Your Pet Story. Win Free Tapo Care!Smart Action 2.0 Explore and meet the next level home automation.
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#2
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Re:Tapo RV30 Plus - Abnormal cleaning algorithm behaviour & scheduling issues & feature requests
2023-06-30 17:44:04 - last edited 2023-06-30 17:45:28

Hi,

 

Firstly thank you for getting in touch and forwarding the details over, I enjoy TP-Link / Tapo products so don't mind from time to time doing some tests and sending you some info in order to improve this.

 

Time wise, my phone and tablet have correct times and timezone set, robot is charged fully.

Interesting you said about time-sync during the configuration, is that the only time the robot synchronizes its time with my device, or is it every time I connect to it via the Tapo app? If its only during configuration, it would probably be wise to implement it on every Tapo app connection with the robot.

 

The scheduling worked this morning 9AM, I have the Do Not Disturb mode to OFF, as previously I used to set it to ON for 8PM to 8AM, so will see if it triggers again tomorrow 9AM and for rest of the week.

 

As for the carpet area, it isn't for the vacuuming part that I am interested in, it detects the carpet most of the time itself just fine, it is when I have the mop schedule set for every other occurring day, which I want it to avoid carpeted areas or have a separate map entirely. Hopefully this clears any confusion?

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#3
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Re:Tapo RV30 Plus - Abnormal cleaning algorithm behaviour & scheduling issues & feature requests
2023-07-05 09:34:50

  @Mandas 

 

The robot vacuum only synchronizes with the mobile device's time during the configuration process. Therefore, if there is a power outage, reboot, or any interruption that disrupts the device's mechanical timing, it may result in anomalies in time-related functions. We will forward your suggestion to the product department and recommend that they optimize the time calculations for local usage scenarios.

 

Regarding the requirement to avoid carpeted areas in mopping mode, I will also submit feedback to the relevant department, and they will conduct further evaluation. You can stay updated on product firmware updates. If there are any new features, they will be mentioned in the firmware release notes.

Landscape Mode - Tapo App for PadShare Your Pet Story. Win Free Tapo Care!Smart Action 2.0 Explore and meet the next level home automation.
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#4
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Re:Tapo RV30 Plus - Abnormal cleaning algorithm behaviour & scheduling issues & feature requests
2023-07-16 18:47:18

  @Mandas 

 

Update on the scheduling, path, bug, mopping.

 

Have been sharing some details in the background with one of the engineers, as the weird cleaning paths do re-appear from time to time.

 

So far scheduling seems to work fine on a WiFi with internet access. Once I've shared enough info with the engineers at TP-Link in resolving most of the issues, I'll set this back onto a private IoT network with no internet access, and see if this issue will still persist in terms of scheduling.

 

Left image - Current algorithm follows the whole room cleaning direction, left from right.

Right image - My suggestion for the algorithm to instead choose the fastest approach for specific regions, such as the blue line representing to only do a straight sweep in that tight area instead of the zig-zag.

Recently had a weird bug with the auto-empty dock, where the emptying future did not work, and provided me an error message that this was done too frequent? Have tried re-inserted the dust-bag, reset the robot vacuum itself, scheduling auto-empty also failed. With the end solution being that I had to physically power off the auto-empty dock and power it back up again, fixing the issue. Hopefully just a rare one time thing.

 

Having used this robot for a while now I can give my opinion further on future iterations of this product. I appreciate that the engineers have done a good job overall of implementing the algorithms in this robot, it hasn't got stuck yet, even if there were few close moments, it seemed like it knew it was stuck and moved to another position.

 

Vacuuming is brilliant, I set this to run daily without issue or worry on it getting stuck somewhere.

 

After a while, whilst I found the mopping itself to be awesome, it overall wasn't to my satisfaction because of the general robot design itself. I have carpets in the house that do get up to 2cm, but this robot struggles traversing these areas with the mop attached, and I think it also got stuck few times on the corners of these carpets, maybe creating the weird circle paths, but cannot confirm this as I did not see this exact occurrence in person.

 

Regarding the mopping and carpet issues, I would heavily like to see something similar to Roomba Combo® j7+ Robot Vacuum and Mop from Tapo, with the retractable mop and auto-sensing of carpets, so will keep Tapo in the back of my mind in next 5 years or so and see if something like this comes out.

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#5
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Re:Tapo RV30 Plus - Abnormal cleaning algorithm behaviour & scheduling issues & feature requests
2023-08-24 08:41:05 - last edited 2023-08-24 08:43:22

  @Mandas Had been testing this for few months now, overall am satisfied.

 

Have talked to engineers with issues I had at the start, such as weird circle navigation on the map. It appears after few firmware updates, this is happening much less frequently now, and overall don't experience any major issues with the algorithms themselves. So I can leave the robot to vacuum and come back to it sitting at the dock.

 

Of course, I would still love to see the feature requests I made to be incorporated into the app sometime, as I would see them useful, but I can also understand they would require development, testing before it seems useful.

 

When purchasing a robot vacuum in the future, I would consider the mopping technology. Frankly, I have forgotten about it in this robot for a good reason, it just does not work well in my home with thicker carpets. I have carpets in the middle of the rooms, and not possible to separate the carpets on the map itself in the app, since my rooms would be in fragments if separated. (As you can maybe tell I really been spoiled with the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra liftable mop.) Never actually tried it so can't say how well it works, but reviews of robots with this technology show it to be working well. Main issue being that with thicker carpets the robot has two issues, difficulty navigating on top of it (I can hear those poor motors doing their best) and the robot dragging a lighter carpet with it, since the mop itself gets caught at the edge of the carpet before stepping on it.

 

 

Now above points aside, there is a question regarding the RV30 robot vacuum bin/dock which is my main reason for creating this post today. I have experienced this few times and noticed that, when the dust bag is roughly 1/4 full, I get told to check by voice and app, to check and replace dust bag if full.

 

I only started to guess the reason for this recently and here is my conclusion, I just want an answer to this and hopefully a solution I could try from yourselves.

 

Firstly, I have done some research and gathered the idea that the carpet detection works with

1) camera and algorithms to detect surface (the expensive solution)

or

2) measuring the Amperage of the vacuum head or suction, since it will require more power for the motor to achieve same suction on a carpet due to a thicker surface (the cheaper solution).

 

 

Standard vacuum cleaners have their turbine at the top, and technically suck the dust through the hose into the middle of the dust bag, so when the turbine goes off, most of the dust settles at the bottom by gravity, this prevents the turbine from being clogged around the center at the top.

 

Most robot vacuums and bins are very similar to each other, their turbines are at the bottom, which suck the dust through the hose into the bottom of the bag straight away. When turbine is on or off, it doesn't matter, the dust will always be at the bottom of the bag.

 

So this is my conclusion, since there is not enough clearance between the turbine opening and the dust bag, I can see that once the dust bag is 1/4 full (thick dust build up at the bottom of the bag), the turbine has to work harder in order to achieve some sort of suction through all of that dust that is already built up there.

 

I have provided some A+ art to explain the issue. Please do let me know what you think of this? I will probably try 3D printing a base around the turbine to increase the height between turbine opening and bag and see if the issue goes away. If this is the issue, I think one way to reduce the occurrence of the message would be to update the firmware to provide a higher threshold to when the check bag message should come up.

 

P.S : Maybe Cyclonic Vacuum Cleaner with dustless bin would be interesting to see ;)

 

 

Standard vacuum bin Standard vacuum bin, dust settles at bottom, not blocking turbine.

 

Robot vaccum bin Standard robot vacuum bin, dust sucked to bottom of bag, blocking turbine.

 

 

 

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#6
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Re:Tapo RV30 Plus - Abnormal cleaning algorithm behaviour & scheduling issues & feature requests
2023-09-13 10:37:33

  @Mandas 

 

It seems that this issue might not be directly linked to the dust collection mechanism after I took a brief look at related information. The principles behind dust collection may also differ from what you speculated.

 

Is this problem still ongoing? If this problem persists, I recommend reaching out directly to the support ticket and having an engineer assist you in conducting a more thorough investigation. It's possible that there could be an anomaly caused by software.

Landscape Mode - Tapo App for PadShare Your Pet Story. Win Free Tapo Care!Smart Action 2.0 Explore and meet the next level home automation.
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#7
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Re:Tapo RV30 Plus - Abnormal cleaning algorithm behaviour & scheduling issues & feature requests
2023-09-14 06:31:59

  @Wayne-TP 

 

Hi,

 

Yes, still have it from time to time until I clear out the vacuum bag.

 

I remember I've talked to your engineer? Needs diagnostic firmware running on it.

 

 

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#8
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