Empty the Robovac

With this post, I would like to introduce a new category: My Automations!

Here, I would like to present some small but useful automations. These usually work without a lot of bells and whistles.

Today, we’re talking about automatically emptying the robot vacuum cleaner. Admittedly, robot vacuum cleaners with a suction station already do this automatically. Personally, I always found it too loud. That’s why I always let it vacuum when I’m not at home.

In this automation, I use a Roborock robot vacuum cleaner. Depending on the manufacturer or model, the implementation may vary.

Create an automation

Of course, dust extraction should only be done when the dust container is full. So, let’s make a helper (number). This should increase by 1 when the robot vacuum cleaner is running. As soon as dust extraction is done, the helper is reset to 0.

To do this, we create these automations.

Increase counter:

alias: "Robo: finished"
description: ""
triggers:
  - entity_id:
      - binary_sensor.floorian_reinigen
    to: "off"
    from: "on"
    trigger: state
conditions: []
  - action: input_number.increment
    metadata: {}
    data: {}
    target:
      entity_id: input_number.robovac_counter
mode: single

Dust extraction when no one is at home for 10 minutes:

alias: "Robo: Empty dust bin"
description: ""
triggers:
  - entity_id:
      - zone.home
    below: 1
    for:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 10
      seconds: 0
    trigger: numeric_state
conditions:
  - condition: numeric_state
    entity_id: input_number.robovac_counter
    above: 0
actions:
  - action: vacuum.send_command
    metadata: {}
    data:
      command: app_start_collect_dust
    target:
      entity_id: vacuum.floorian
mode: single

I also have a notification sent to me. But that’s only optional.

Thanks to this automation, I haven’t had to listen to the rather loud vacuum cleaner for months.