Making my first plugin : ThinkingCleaner for Roomba

Posted on
Wed Mar 23, 2016 3:38 am
tenallero offline
Posts: 94
Joined: Oct 31, 2011
Location: Barcelona

Re: Making my first plugin : ThinkingCleaner for Roomba

kwijibo007 wrote:
Hi tenallero,

Thanks for the plugin!

I just received my thinking cleaner and have tested out the plugin. When Roomba is docked and I trigger a clean or undock from the plugin, Roomba doesn't undock gracefully by reversing but bashes forward against the dock. It's as if Roomba doesn't realise that it's docked. When I trigger a clean from the Thinking Cleaner app it's works normally.

My Roomba is a 630.

I noticed in the Indigo device settings that the "Type" is a "tc500". Should this be 600? I can't change the setting, it's greyed out.

Any thoughts?

Pete


Hi Pete,

When your Roomba is physically docked ... which value is shown for RoombaState state at the "Custom States" panel on Indigo Client screen?
Normally, must show RoombaState = dock

Posted on
Wed Mar 23, 2016 3:45 am
tenallero offline
Posts: 94
Joined: Oct 31, 2011
Location: Barcelona

Re: Making my first plugin : ThinkingCleaner for Roomba

kwijibo007 wrote:
Thanks Ramon, will do.

Can you just confirm what json command you are sending within the plugin to start a clean? This works correctly when I send the json command from the browser but it head buts the dock in your plugin.

Pete


Switch on = "Start clearning" action:
if RoombaState = dock then send /command.json?command=leavehomebase
Finally send /command.json?command=clean

Switch off = "Return to Dock" action:
/command.json?command=dock

I think you can see the requests on Indigo´s event log if you put the plugin in debug mode on.

Posted on
Wed Mar 23, 2016 4:20 am
kwijibo007 offline
Posts: 325
Joined: Sep 27, 2013
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Re: Making my first plugin : ThinkingCleaner for Roomba

tenallero wrote:

Hi Pete,

When your Roomba is physically docked ... which value is shown for RoombaState state at the "Custom States" panel on Indigo Client screen?
Normally, must show RoombaState = dock


Hi Ramon,

RoombaState = dock

tenallero wrote:
Switch on = "Start clearning" action:
if RoombaState = dock then send /command.json?command=leavehomebase
Finally send /command.json?command=clean

Switch off = "Return to Dock" action:
/command.json?command=dock

I think you can see the requests on Indigo´s event log if you put the plugin in debug mode on.


I see. Thanks for explaining. Would it be possible to add a new action which just cleans instead of undocking and then cleaning? This would pretty much fix my issue as straight cleaning has no problem.

I'll contact the Thinking Cleaner guys about the odd behaviour when undocking and let you know the outcome.

Pete

Posted on
Wed Apr 06, 2016 2:30 pm
kwijibo007 offline
Posts: 325
Joined: Sep 27, 2013
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Re: Making my first plugin : ThinkingCleaner for Roomba

I emailed The Thinking Cleaner guys who were really helpful. The were able to replicate my issue and fixed it in the latest firmware update..

No issues now with the Roomba 630.

Thanks for your help.

Pete

Posted on
Thu Apr 07, 2016 4:12 am
haavarda offline
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Location: Norway

Re: Making my first plugin : ThinkingCleaner for Roomba

Interesting. What firmware are you on now?

Håvard

Posted on
Thu Apr 07, 2016 6:06 am
kwijibo007 offline
Posts: 325
Joined: Sep 27, 2013
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Re: Making my first plugin : ThinkingCleaner for Roomba

haavarda wrote:
Interesting. What firmware are you on now?


1.0.92-310C-FCC

At one stage I was testing a beta version but I'm fairly certain it has updated again since then?

Posted on
Thu Apr 07, 2016 6:08 am
haavarda offline
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Location: Norway

Re: Making my first plugin : ThinkingCleaner for Roomba

That is a newer version than I am running...

Håvard

Posted on
Mon Apr 11, 2016 7:06 am
tenallero offline
Posts: 94
Joined: Oct 31, 2011
Location: Barcelona

Re: Making my first plugin : ThinkingCleaner for Roomba

kwijibo007 wrote:
I emailed The Thinking Cleaner guys who were really helpful. The were able to replicate my issue and fixed it in the latest firmware update..

No issues now with the Roomba 630.

Thanks for your help.

Pete


Pete,

That are good news.
Thanks for reporting

Posted on
Sun Apr 17, 2016 1:03 pm
Bram Elderman offline
Posts: 4
Joined: Nov 25, 2014

Re: Making my first plugin : ThinkingCleaner for Roomba

Sorry for very late response,.. this is Abraham from Thinking Bits and a Indigo user myself,... we were a bit swamped the last month because of other projects,... there is not much different between the 500 and 600 settings except for the 600 software 2016 that is totally different... you should be able to change tis using the web interface of your thinking cleaner.

Did you try to do it in the app ??

BTW there is no need to give a leave dock command to start cleaning when docked... just send a clean command and it should leave and start cleaning
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Posted on
Tue Apr 26, 2016 12:43 am
kwijibo007 offline
Posts: 325
Joined: Sep 27, 2013
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Re: Making my first plugin : ThinkingCleaner for Roomba

Bram Elderman wrote:
BTW there is no need to give a leave dock command to start cleaning when docked... just send a clean command and it should leave and start cleaning


+1. Would really like to see an option where the default behaviour is to directly clean and not to undock and then clean.

On a side note, has anyone had an issue where the plugin continually sends a clean command, causing Roomba to start cleaning and seconds later stop, and re-start again (over and over)? I've had this issue twice. Can't be good for Roomba. I'm not 100% sure it's the plugin or the Thinking Cleaner but I suspect it's the plugin as it's not happened since I have disabled it in Indigo (temporarily for troubleshooting). Is it possible that the plugin gets in a loop where it keeps sending the command?

Pete

Posted on
Sat Apr 30, 2016 4:07 am
tenallero offline
Posts: 94
Joined: Oct 31, 2011
Location: Barcelona

Re: Making my first plugin : ThinkingCleaner for Roomba

kwijibo007 wrote:
Bram Elderman wrote:
BTW there is no need to give a leave dock command to start cleaning when docked... just send a clean command and it should leave and start cleaning


+1. Would really like to see an option where the default behaviour is to directly clean and not to undock and then clean.

On a side note, has anyone had an issue where the plugin continually sends a clean command, causing Roomba to start cleaning and seconds later stop, and re-start again (over and over)? I've had this issue twice. Can't be good for Roomba. I'm not 100% sure it's the plugin or the Thinking Cleaner but I suspect it's the plugin as it's not happened since I have disabled it in Indigo (temporarily for troubleshooting). Is it possible that the plugin gets in a loop where it keeps sending the command?

Pete


Hi Pete,

A new release is ready 1.06
You will find a new parameter at device level, where you can to choose undock (or not) before start to clean.
Let me know.

About start/stop/re-start cycle ....
Do you have any indigo trigger that send start/stop to Roomba?
Do you have any indigo´s debug log where I can see these start/stop/re-start?

Regards,
Ramon

Posted on
Wed May 04, 2016 4:34 am
kwijibo007 offline
Posts: 325
Joined: Sep 27, 2013
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Re: Making my first plugin : ThinkingCleaner for Roomba

Hi Ramon,

Thanks for update, the undocking now works well.

Regarding the start/stop/re-start cycle, no triggers at all and nothing in the log. What I have noticed is that the plugin fairly constantly doesn't register state changes (after docking it still shows as "on" in Indigo). This is when the issue occurs. If I toggle it to off (when the state incorrectly shows as "on"), the cycling begins.

Any suggestions of things I can do to troubleshoot?

Anyone else using a Roomba 600 series and does/doesn't have the issue?

Pete

Posted on
Thu May 05, 2016 12:34 am
haavarda offline
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Location: Norway

Re: Making my first plugin : ThinkingCleaner for Roomba

I have not seen these issues...

Håvard

Posted on
Sun May 08, 2016 3:35 pm
Bram Elderman offline
Posts: 4
Joined: Nov 25, 2014

Re: Making my first plugin : ThinkingCleaner for Roomba

Hi all Thinking Cleaner and Ramon great plugin users...

Let me give a little guidance about the leave dock command:

This command is actually a kind of "macro" created by us for users that want to use the manual drive to drive off the dock. Since there is no option in the roomba to drive backwards we manually drive the motors count pulses to prepare for manual drive... since we do this in the first ± 10 seconds any command send to the TC unit in between will interrupt the Leave dock "macro" and could leave it in a undesired or unknown state. The the <leave dock> command can only be used reliably if you wait for this "macro command" to be finished, with a timer since we give no feedback. If you want to script the Clean action it is always best to just use the <clean> command WITHOUT <leave dock> because a docked roomba wil automatically leave the dock first before cleaning.

we need to switch the roomba in "UNSAFE" mode to back-off the dock in theory if a dock is close to a cliff is close to the dock we could drive in danger :? however we discovered that dirty contacts of the homebase sometimes makes the roomba (and us) think we are leaving the dock,.. so we tuned the software a bit dependant on the models to be more reliable.


anyone that has unreliable response and needs a update on the firmware please mail support@thinkingbits.nl so we can manually update your firmware if needed.
we are not always on the fora but are always in mail ;-)

Abraham Elderman
Thinking Bits design team

Posted on
Sun May 08, 2016 6:25 pm
durosity offline
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Location: Newcastle Upon Tyne, Ye Ol' England.

Making my first plugin : ThinkingCleaner for Roomba

Can't wait to get a thinkingcleaner for my roomba.. Just gotta save up a bit first! :D


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