"I powered off. Please start me again" problem

[giulio]

Hello everybody.

I live in Italy.
Yesterday I received a brand new xv-11 I had ordered from Amazon.com on Nov. 30th. I got it re-shipped here via BONVU.COM and I'm really satisfied with their service.

The unit has rev. 113 board.

I charged it, and when the status led was green, I put it to work. After 2-3 minutes of cleaning, it just died there. When I turned it back on, on the LCD display there was the message "I powered off. Please start me again".

I tried several other times, but the result was always the same, no matter where I put the charging base. Usually it happens when it finishes the perimeter or when it just starts to clean the center of the room by doing the back and forth lines, and anyway it doesn't last more than 2-3 minutes from the start of the mission.

I tried to put it in a small room with the charging base, but that didn't seem to help. In fact, it never finished a single cleaning cycle without giving the dreaded message.

Neato's web site FAQ is not very helpful either, since they say:

"I powered off. Please start me again"

The robot got confused and powered itself off. The cleaning cycle has ended and you need to restart the robot to start a new cleaning cycle.

Confused by what?

Anyway

I shut down the system via support menu, and even though it had run for less than 20 mins, the robot asked to be re-charged because its batteries were low, so I plugged the power adaper directly to the back port and left it under charge the whole night.

This morning the status led was solid green, so I did some more tests, but again the dreaded "I powered off. Please start me again" message came out.

I did a system shutdown again, and again it said batteries were low in spite of the fact it had worked like 10 mins in total, so now it's under charge and, as you can imagine, I'm quite disappointed.

Now the problem is, there were no re-shipper services to Italy that offered a return guarantee, and anyway BONVU.COM doesn't, so even though everything points to my unit being somewhat defective, I hope there's some test I can do myself to try and understand where the problem lies, because gtting a replacement would cost an arm and a leg.

As far as i know, nobody on this board had a problem similar to this, so I really don't know what to think. It would be really bad luck if a brand new problem manifested itself right on an unit shipped abroad.

I hope Neato special guest can offer some advice.



Edit: I noticed that when the robot says "I powered off..." the clock resets, but strangely it doesn't reset to 0:00 like when you issue the shutdown command, rather it resets to 1:15 and the day of the week to Sun.

Also, another thing I noticed, which is very weird in case of a hardware problem, is that the time the robot lasts before giving the message is somewhat proportional to the room size.

If you put it in a very small room, it powers off a lot sooner than it does when you start it in a large room. Also, it never shuts itself off while still in the perimeter phase, but right at the end of it, just before starting the back-and-forth stripes, or a bit after that.

If it wasn't too weird, I'd rather think of some software problem. My reasoning is that if there was a battery problem or some faulty component, the problem should happen randomly, without any pattern.

Is it possible that something went wrong when the firwmare was flashed?

[giulio]

Nice. I've got a 400+ euros doorstop and customer service says nothing... not event "we are investigating your issue". For now what I can say is: avoid Neato like the plague, unless you live in the US.

[warlock79]

Youre right man... As reading the whole problems, I am now not confident in the Neato... Unfortunately or fortunately, I have my Neato waiting at my relatives place in US. After visitng them this Jan 2011, I will have to take it with me to Switzerland and Pray...lol

[justflie]

That's a weird problem. Mine works fine but not having warranty support for a 1st gen product would always have me a little edgy. I live in the US so it's not really a concern for me.

If it really is a firmware issue, perhaps it will be fixed with the soon-to-be-released firmware update. Someone on this forum had spoken with Neato customer service and was told to expect an update in the Dec/Jan timeframe. I'd imagine the new firmware completely overwrites the old FW so maybe that will solve your issue.

[sageman]

it sounds like it could be dodgy firmware flashing

but surly the people that make the neato give them a quick runnaround to see if there are any problems like a plug on the pcb is unplugged

[giulio]

The thing that drives me crazy is that the robot seems just fine. All the sensors work, it doesn't give any error message. It just shuts off, and then you find that rather unhelpful message, stating something the user can cleary see by himself. I know you powered off, what I want to know is WHY

yesterday I put it on the table to see how it would behave. It cleaned the whole table without falling down (so the fall sensors work as well) and at the end it docked (yes I had put the docking station on the table as well).

After that I confined it under a desk, and again it cleaned the small area and then went back to the starting point without shutting down.

The problem is, if the space is larger than a few square meters, it cleans the perimeter and then shuts off. And never while doing the perimeter, always afterwards.

I think this should ring some bell to some engineer at Neato: whatever the problem, it doesn't have any effect while in the perimeter phase, but only afterwards.

I tried in all the rooms, which range from small to rather large, and the problem manifests everywhere. So it's not some weird reflective surface or anything like that.

If it is the firmware, maybe Neato support could give me the current firmware, to try and re-flash it. I don't want any fancy beta firmware, just the one it should already have on-board, to try and see if re-flashing helps.

It happened to me once that I solved a problem on a router that way: one batch of them had had problems during the factory flashing procedure, and needed to be re-flashed with the same exact firmware to work properly.

I just hope anybody from Neato shows up: I doudb I can do anything without their help.

[giulio]

Oh, and by the way I measured the batteries. After some tests (so not completely charged) they were both 7.8V. The thermistors were 11.3 and 11.8 KOhm @ 19 °C.

The values seem pretty normal to me.

[Fraggboy]

One thing that I didn't see, or you perform (Unless my eyes didn't catch it) was to remove the battery covers and unplug the batteries for at least a few seconds (10 seconds would suffice). Replace batteries and covers, and charge.

I have noticed that by merly shutting it down via the menu doesn't fully power down the robot and truly 'reset' itself. Removing the batteries, and/or powering it down via the menu resets the charging circuit, thus saying the batteries are low, even when you know the battery is full. Just let it cycle through the charging cycles which doesn't take a long time (Less than 5 minutes for me).

Hope that helps.

[sageman]

if that doesn't work blow or if you've got any compressed air in can the turret could be something in there messing something up its worth a try

[giulio]

One thing that I didn't see, or you perform (Unless my eyes didn't catch it) was to remove the battery covers and unplug the batteries for at least a few seconds (10 seconds would suffice). Replace batteries and covers, and charge

Fraggboy, thanks for your reply.

I did that twice. Once when the problem first appeared, after a few attemtps, and then again today when I tested both the voltage of the battery packs and the resistance of the relative thermistors. But you're right, I didn't state it explicitly.

It didn't help though

[giulio]

if that doesn't work blow or if you've got any compressed air in can the turret could be something in there messing something up its worth a try

I haven't done that yet, since before shutting down the robot seems to navigate properly. But I have nothing to lose, so I'll try that too. Thanks for your advice.

[giulio]

uhm nope, didn't work. but I agree it was worth a try.

[sageman]

ive been thinking maybe its like a computer crash
starts to think best way to do room and cant for some reason (bad flashing) gets confused and like someone when confused gets all annoyed neato shuts down

[giulio]

yep it seems something like that. it's like when it starts to calculate the optimal way to clean it crashes. that's why I think it's weird as a hardware failure. I've sent it like on 50 missions and not even once it shut down before having done the whole perimeter. a faulty component knows squat about perimeters and stuff, when it fails it fails.

could also be the eeprom (or whatever kind of chip they use to store the firmware).

[vic7767]

There is an auto-resettable fuse link on each battery pack. I would suspect that one of those two fuses is defective and opens after a certain amount of discharge has occurred.

[sageman]

hmmm but why would it go at the same time in the cleaning pattern no matter what size the room

[vic7767]

That would depend on the current being consumed for a particular task and the fuse able link threshold.

[sageman]

ahh

[giulio]

vic, thanks for your input, that's an interesting idea.
So far the problem hasn't gotten worse with battery discharge. Do you think it's possible that the fuse is triggered by the current output / battery temperature instead of the charge level?

Also, any idea on how I could determine if your'e right?

[giulio]

Oh, and another thing I forgot to mention: after the weird clock resets yesterday, today the clock has never reset when the robot shuts down so maybe the two things are unrelated.