Shark IQ Robot with Self-Empty Base

Update 8: My robot has developed a leg fetish (see video), can someone recommend a good therapist for robots? Update 7: Cleans well except for any of the following when 1/4" to 1/2" long: thread, yarn, Doritos, felt, etc. I think it just needs a better brush. I'd trade the current tangle resistance brush for a brush that helped clean better any day. It is fun at parties though: Guest 1 drops a Dorito; Guest 2 steps on Dorito; I call: "Alexa, tell Shark to clean dining room"; Guests laugh hysterically as Shark IQ drives over Dorito fragments leaving them undisturbed. Update 6: When you press the Play (labeled Clean) button in the Shark app, if you pick the option to clean up to 3 specific rooms, you cannot clean the last room entered on the map, it won't let you scroll that far (they put the button over that option) so you can scroll it into view but you can't hold the scroll position in view with one finger while clicking the option with the other, if you let go of the position to click the option it goes back behind the button so you cannot click it. So make sure the last thing you add to the map is a no-go area so that all of the other rooms are options when sending Shark to clean manually (you can always clean the "hidden" room via Alexa though). Update 5: Mapping has completed. Labeling rooms is not intuitive, after you add each room, it makes you rename all of the previous rooms you already defined and labeled as follows: Define room 1, give it a name, define room 2, give room 1 a name, give room 2 a name, define room 3, give room 1 a name, give room 2 a name, give room 3 a name ... So I have my rooms defined, I have one Shark IQ set up, I can send my Shark to clean a specific room as follows (paraphrasing because I don't remember the exact wording): Me: "Alexa, ask Shark to clean the Family Room." Alexa: "Which Shark vacuum would you like me to use?" Me: "Shark". That's right, I have one Shark and I named it Shark, but every time I tell Alexa to do something with my Shark, it asks me to pick a Shark out of the following set of Sharks: [Shark]. Shark app will not let you schedule cleaning of a room or a set of rooms. You can schedule when to clean everything, you can't schedule when to clean something. I want Shark to start cleaning after everyone has left for school and work, and I want it to finish before anyone gets back. Unfortunately, because it takes about 2.5 hours to clean my house, between, emptying and charging it finishes around 6 pm. We start getting home from work and school around 2 pm. So, I tried scheduling rooms through Alexa Routines. The only way you can schedule the Shark skill in Alexa is to schedule Alexa to ask you what you want the Shark to do. I tried using Google Assistant as outlined in the documentation found in the Shark app but Google Assistant can't find the Shark ROBOT service as described in the Shark IQ documentation. But I was able to schedule cleaning of 3 rooms a day so that the robot is always dormant while we are at home and every room gets cleaned every 24 hours: I used Google Assistant Routines to have Google Assistant tell Alexa what to tell the Shark to do, it works flawlessly. The hard part was setting up 10 "Say something" commands for each schedule: First "Say something" command tells Alexa which room needs to be vacuumed, the next 8 "Say something" commands in each Routine I put four spaces in (not sure if quantity matters) that pause Google Assistant long enough for Alexa to ask which of my one robots I want it to use, and the last Say command says: "Shark". So to schedule my Shark IQ to clean specific rooms at specific times on specific days I put a Google Mini next to an Echo Dot and the Google Assistant takes care of the schedule, the Google Mini tells the Echo Dot what to do, the Echo Dot then tells the Shark what to do. Rube Goldberg would be proud. Update 4: Scheduled runs often fail complaining: "... cannot run because its dust cup is missing." So I may need to find the dust bin sensor and hard wire it to always report present since it often reports missing even though dust bin is properly inserted and latched. The only time I have ever removed the dust bin was to clear dust cup error. Update 3: New firmware today: V3.4.11-20191015V3.6.18-m149-Oct 26 2019MesaM1.8.20MesaB0.1.1S2.0.107 I wish they would publish change logs. Update 2: This is what I want before I give this product 5 stars (some of these features probably already exist for this product already but won't be enabled until mapping is complete): 1. Ability to get rid of BotBoundaries and instead draw boundaries on map. 2. Ability to give robot verbal hints about where a new dry spill is as in: Alexa, tell Shark to clean Kitchen Southwest. What I'd like that to do is imagine that each room has 9 dots: NW, N, NE, W, Center, E, SW, S, SE. Center is default. When you send it to a room it starts at the dot specified where W and E caused it to clean a third of the room first traveling N to S and S to N, N and S cleans a third traveling W to E and E to W, and NW, NE, SW, and SE start by cleaning a quarter of the room and sending to the center cleans third of the room first either traveling N to S or W to E, whatever it normally does when cleaning the whole floor. This way when you want to clean up a spill of dry goods you can send it to the point of nine closest to the spill in that room to start. 3. Ability to see location of robot on map in app. Helpful when you need to find robot for any reason but you can't hear in stereo. For me, using the existing find robot feature is like playing the game hotter colder as it only tells me if I'm getting closer or not each time it plays sound because I can't hear in stereo. Update 1: After I wrote my original review I noticed that the cleaning history was updating but the app said that it couldn't connect to my Shark. So I now think that there really was just an issue with Shark's servers. Day 1, no connectivity issues. Day after posting my review: no connectivity issues. The Shark has cleaned my house 25 times but says map is only 40% complete. The incomplete map that it won't let me edit yet looks 100% accurate and 100% complete. So I'm raising my rating from 1 star to 4 stars instead of 5. Next week if mapping still isn't finished I'll lower it to 2. After mapping is complete and I've been able to test all the features I might raise rating to five stars. So far, it has cleaned house well on schedule, alerts me at work when it gets stuck (now averages getting stuck less than once a day) so I can send one of my kids to get it up and running again. I wish it came with three times as much BotBoundary. Original: As soon as it installed firmware version V3.4.10-20190826V3.6.15-1321-Aug 27 2019MesaM1.8.2MesaB0.1.1S2.0.102 it could no longer stay connected to WiFi, so to control this vacuum by smartphone or voice you need a WiFi robot capable of turning the Shark IQ RV1001AE off, waiting 10 seconds, then turning it back on. I have two subnets/SSIDs, one mesh (Google WiFi), one not (Google Fiber's Built in WiFi). None of my other wifi devices at home have any trouble staying connected to either network. I've tried my Shark on both since the firmware upgrade, it disconnects from both. So it can still vacuum the whole house on a schedule, returning to base to empty and to charge on it's own. I just don't get notifications when it gets stuck, and I can't send it to go clean a specific room in my house without first walking over to the charging base, turning the vacuum off, waiting a few seconds, and then turning it back on. If the noisy vacuum interrupts a conversation, I can't pause it with my phone, I have to get up and press the Dock button or turn it off. Also, when it gets stuck, it usually gets stuck right when it starts working as one of it's wheels will slide off the side of the charging base ramp pad and somehow get stuck on the of the pad with the stuck wheel on the carpet but the ribbed side of the wheel stuck on the corner of the ramp.