Neato D7 and ESP32-C3 Mini

[korfox13]

Hey,
first of all: Thank you very much for your effort and work. This is an awesome project.
I recently bought a cheap D7 (because I read about the server shut-down and read about your project). So it was factory reset already when I started to have fun with this project ;).

Now coming to my experiences:
I am completely new to ESP32 and not so new to Home Assistant but using very basic functions.
I've got this Neato D7 and a ESP32-C3 Mini (precisely: Binghe ESP32 C3 Pro Mini). First I flashed v1.1 to the ESP32 (with the minor changes needed to be done in the top of the yaml) and connected it externally to the Debug-Bus. This went fine and so I started looking into the next repo.
The first try with the 1.2-b3 (commit e611e43) lead to a frozen ESP32 (I think... It didn't connect to the WiFi but it also wasn't in a bootloop).
The second try was more successfull and the ESP32 connected to the WiFi and in general I was able to see my D7s data in Home Assistant. So i soldered all together and placed the ESP32 inside of the rotbot.
During testing I realized: as soon as I started the motor the ESP32 lost the WiFi. So some additional changes were necessary and now it works like a charm.
Following changes I had to do (not really knowing wich one really made the relevant changes):

esp32:
  board: esp32-c3-devkitm-1
  variant: esp32c3
  framework:
    type: esp-idf
    version: 5.3.2

This (more specific: binding the framework to version 5.3.2) probably made the ESP32 able to connect to the WiFi at all.

  ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
  password: !secret wifi_password
  output_power: 8.5dBm
  fast_connect: true
  power_save_mode: HIGH

Probably resulted in a stable WiFi even if the motor was running up.

  name: kehrbert # If you want another name, change it here, remeber to replace it in the ha-card.yaml!
  platformio_options:
    board_build.flash_mode: dio

This ... well I don't know why I changed the flash mode. anymore Perhapst because I used GPIO20/21 as RX/TX and these are shared woth the USB port.

Remaining observations so far:

1. As soon as the robot switches the mesh repeater (independent from if it is cruising through the apartment or if I move it from the upper floor to the lower floor) it becomes unavailable in Home Assistant. I didn't check yet if it loses the network connection or if only the HA card loses the device. But it is annoying because I'll have to reboot the robot every time this happens. Currently this is ok but when scheduling is available it will be not reliable enough...

2. Is there any chance to correct the datetime of the robot via the ESP32? I know - it is not causing any issues that the robot thinks we live in the year 2020 - but somehow I don't like it if values are not correct :-/.

Well. Once again thank you for that great piece of work so far. I am really looking forward to the future of this project.

[chatter80]

hy i have no wlan connection please can post yaml config ?

[korfox13]

See the code snippet above (for next branch):

  ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
  password: !secret wifi_password
  output_power: 8.5dBm
  fast_connect: true
  power_save_mode: HIGH

For 1.1.1 I didn't need these additional lines. IT worked ootb with the template yaml (just changing tte device data and filling the secrets file).

[chatter80]

Thank you

[Philip2809]

Awesome you got it working in the end, I didn't need those changes tho some people I have seen needed to add the board_build.flash_mode as well, will mention it in the new docs for the c3 mini, since that one seems to need it.

about your questions, for 1.2 I am planning to do scheduling both via ha but also via esphome directly, so you technically don't need connection to ha. About the robot time, will remove this for 1.2 at least for the gen3 robots since it is unused as it is no longer connected to its server.

I will continue to make this project better and hopefully all features back :D

[korfox13]

Yeah. Removing datetime is fine, too :).
As I schedule everything via HA it would be helpful for me if I got the WiFi connection stabilized.
Perhaps I will look for another ESP32 that is less sensitive on voltage fluctuation. Perhaps it also is because the battery of my robot is in a quite bad state (it doesn't charge over 89% anymore and drops from ~45% to 7% within a second). So my first action will be replacing the battery.

[Matten-Matten]

First of all, a huge thank you for the project!

Hello, I'm joining this thread because my setup is roughly the same.

First, the specs:

ESP:  Binghe ESP32 C3 PRO Mini Module
Vacuum cleaner:  Neato D3
neato-connected-Version:  1.2-b.3 (next)

My configurations:

neato-vacuum.yaml

esp32:
  variant: esp32c3
  framework:
    type: esp-idf

substitutions:
  uart_tx: 21
  uart_rx: 20

# If you want to have access via the webserver, uncomment the following 2 lines (remove the #)
web_server:
  port: 80

esphome:
  name: neato-vacuum # If you want another name, change it here, remeber to replace it in the ha-card.yaml!
...

secrets.yaml

neato_vacuum_api: "xxxxxx"
neato_vacuum_ota: "xxxxxxx"

wifi_ssid: "<WIFI_SSID>"
wifi_password: "<WIFI_PASSWORD>"

Using the configuration, I created the .bin file via HA and flashed it to the ESP via USB using web.esphome.io.
Since I'm not familiar with Home Assistant, I had to install HA first.

My passion is HomeMatic with OpenCCU, and I need a connection from Neato-Connected to OpenCCU, specifically to MQTT/Node-RED.

So I started looking for a way to easily send commands and receive the current values ​​from the ESP. I did all of this by debugging the Neato-Connected web interface.

I built a CCU addon that receives the data via stream and publishes the values ​​to MQTT.

The addon isn't publicly available yet, as it's still under development. However, it's already running in my test environment.

@Philip2809 I'd like to continue exchanging ideas with you, as it's also interesting to establish a connection on other systems.

Currently, I'm also experiencing the problem that the stream cuts out after a while. I've implemented a reconnect feature, but perhaps there's still room for improvement. (This might be related to the ESP, as the web interface shows "neato-vacuum:
Started 14 minutes 16 seconds ago..." which could indicate an ESP restart occurring automatically.)

A Wi-Fi configuration option in the web interface would also be great.

Here are a few pictures of the add-on.
For the logo, I chose the icon that you use in HA-card, as I couldn't find another one in your project.😅

Greetings,
Matten Matten

[Philip2809]

Hey @Matten-Matten Amazing, nice you have looked also done some things here and I am glad I could help you out! I am currently making the webserver to look just like the ha card, and I am very soon done with this. I guess you could use the esphome api and then you don't need the mqtt stuff? Thank you for sharing your implementation, I guess OpenCCU support could also be used. Yes, I am soon fixing the logo and chaning the name a little based on some stuff we talked about in the discord

[rnldnkp]

For me the issue was using RX/TX GPIO 20 and 21. Somehow this interferes with the Wifi Antenna. Even without the projects code a working ESP32 is broken when just soldering the wires. I swapped 20/21 with 3/4 (next to 3.3V and GND), worked instantly!

[GFBsoul]

Also running a C3 Mini (actually SuperMini). The ceramic WiFi antenna is pretty crappy. Soldering a piece of 61mm wire to the ESP seems to improve stuff. See https://community.home-assistant.io/t/esp32-c3-super-mini-wifi-signal-booster/657661/7

Together with:

wifi:
  output_power: 8.5dBm
  fast_connect: true
  power_save_mode: HIGH

Operation seems to be stable enough.