VX-11 charging station issue

[Islandborn]

Greetings fellas. I've had a VX-11 for the last few years and it still works great. Take pretty good care of it and I keep it maintained and cleaned. My issue that I have found with research is along with other owners of this model, my unit will not find it's charging base. I have done all the recommended things....Make sure the base has open 3 feet on all sides, etc.

The weird thing is that sometimes if I choose spot clean, it will return to the base fine. Most times, it will just come close to the base at and angle and stop when it needs to be charged or when it is done. I also have noticed that if I pause the unit during cleaning, the "return to base" on the display will not be there.

I have researched and found that when you take a picture of the charging base with the flash on your phone, you should see 4 reflective lights on the base. I do not see these lights on mine. Could this be the issue? Any help would be appreciated.

[TechGuy]

Two checks:
1. Is your VX-11 doing a very slow motion turn around in front of the dock?
2. After your XV-11 stopped in front of the dock, tell your Neato to shutdown using the front panel. If your Neato is telling you that it cannot be shutdown because it is charging.

If the answer is yes for both tests, it is D14 problem.
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=19996&hilit=+slow+motion

[Islandborn]

Thanks for the reply. No, it does not do either of the above. I just did a spot clean and it found the base but 2 spot cleans before and it did not. Very frustrating! Seems like it is just hit or miss with returning to base. Do the new connected bot vacs have this issue? Other then returning to base, my old vx-11 works great. Don't feel like spending 700$ just for the dock issue

[glnc222]

Using the Neato Control Program over USB with the bot in front of the dock you could see whether the dock is visible to lidar, besides opening the dock and checking the reflector and dark plastic cover. It sounds like a border line lidar detection issue. Perhaps slightly off lidar rpm degrades the pattern detection, symptom of wear on the lidar motor -- hard to say.