Plus, commands you should try
If you’ve got yourself a robot vacuum, you’re already living in a hands-free cleaning nirvana, but there’s a chance you’re still using your phone or – God forbid – pushing an actual button to start your cleaning jobs.
And to be frank, the robots are laughing at you, but it needn’t be that way. Why not have Alexa or Google Assistant send the orders instead? Robo vacs are, after all, about convenience, so use your smart speakers and outsource the job entirely.
Read this: What the hell is Wi-Fi 6 and why should you care?
While the robo vac market is more crowded than ever, iRobot’s Roomba vacuums are still synonymous with the category. Below, we’ll teach you how to get your Roomba vac or mop working with Alexa and the Google Assistant.
How to connect Roomba to Alexa
Assistant integration applies to your entire fleet of machines, so you can’t do it on a vac-by-vac basis. To get connected, do this:
1. Open the iRobot app and tap the Settings icon top left.
2. Tap Smart Home.
3. Tap Works With Amazon Alexa.
4. Tap the Link Account button. This will kick you to the Alexa app or, if you don’t have that, the web browser.
5. Yap the Link button.
6. It will then kick you back to the iRobot app.
At this point the Alexa app should notify you that it’s detected the Roomba. If not, you should be able to find it with a manual device search.
You also don’t need to manually enable the iRobot Skill – it’s done so for you when the two accounts are linked.
How to connect Roomba to Google Assistant
While the iRobot app has an option for Google Assistant integration in the same place you’ll find Alexa, you don’t actually need to use this app at all. Instead, just do the following:
1. Open the Google Home app.
2. Tap Add at the top of the home screen.
3. Tap Set up device.
4. Tap where it asks Have something already set up?
5. Search for iRobot and select it.
6. You’ll be kicked to the iRobot app, where you’ll be asked if you want to link your accounts.
7. Once you’ve confirmed, it should throw you back to the Google Home app where you’ll be asked to select your Roomba, choose which room it’s in and confirm the home address.
Roomba: Alexa and Google Assistant commands to try
The way in which you talk to Alexa and Google Assistant with Roomba differs, and we don’t mean the difference in saying “Alexa” or “Hey Google.” Whereas with Google you can simply tell Assistant to carry out the action you’d wish your Roomba to perform, with Alexa you’ll need to tell it to “ask Roomba” to do something.
For example, you can say “Ok Google, start cleaning” but for Alexa it’s “Alexa, ask Roomba to start cleaning.” It feels a little less smart when you’re talking to Alexa, but the good news is that the range of possible commands is about the same on both.
They range from the basics to specifying rooms for your vac or mop to tackle.
Top tip: You can give your Roomba its own name name, so if you have more than one, you can specify which one you want to use. Here are some commands to try out.
- “Ok Google, start vacuuming.”
- “Alexa, ask Roomba to pause vacuuming.”
- “Ok Google, where is my mop?“
- “Alexa, ask Roomba where it is.”
If you have any iRobots with smart mapping, you can label these rooms in the app and have Alexa and Google Assistant direct your vacs and mops to them.
- “Ok Google, clean my living room.”
- “Alexa, ask Roomba to clean my bedroom.”
- “Alexa, ask Braava to start mopping the basement.“
- “Ok Google, tell (robot name) to start mopping the basement.“
- “Alexa, ask Roomba, when is [robot name] scheduled to clean?”
- “Ok Google, the bathroom needs to be cleaned.”
- “Alexa, ask Roomba to schedule a cleaning job on (day) at (time).”
If you have both a Roomba and one of iRobot’s Braava mops, you can also deploy them both in the same command.
- “Alexa, tell Roomba to vacuum and Braava to mop.“
- “Hey Google, vacuum and mop the kitchen.”