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.