Having Roomba cleaners as a part of your smart home is as relieving as it gets. But you can make it more cooperative and unifying if you connect Roomba to Alexa. Alexa is a virtual assistant for smart homes, brought about by amazon.
Alexa in itself can control several smart devices, turning itself the hub of the home automation system. (Usually, this can be called echo.) Alexa also plays music, set alarms (by connecting to doorbells and adt alarms), Set reminders and to-do lists, provide weather forecast, and is even capable of holding voice interaction.
You can connect your Roomba to Alexa (Echo SmartHome) to keep a schedule and to smarten the device instead of setting it up to work manually. Alexa will automatically send the Roomba the instruction to clean on command or would prompt the device to clean as scheduled by the user.
Why should you connect Roomba to Alexa?
You must be wondering, why should you connect Roomba to Alexa, seeing as Roomba can work independently, and with its new mapping system, it is also a smart device. But the best upgrade is that of the voice command, yes, you can simply instruct Alexa to clean the kitchen, and it would in turn prompt Roomba. This with the ease of scheduling routines on Alexa would take a lot of burden off you.
How do you connect Roomba to Alexa?
In this section, GadgetsWright will guide you on the steps to take to connect Roomba to Alexa easily.
Here you go:
- Open up your iRobot app on your device
- Sign in to your account
- Tap the hamburger icon
- Tap Smart Home
- Choose the Works with Amazon Alexa logo
- Tap Link Account
- Your phone will request permission to open the Alexa app>Grant and accept the link-up in Alexa. (If you don’t, you will be directed to the Amazon website to log in)
- Confirm the linking process by selecting Link
How do I control my Roomba with Alexa?
After you are done with linking up both platforms, You can now use voice commands from Alexa to put Roomba to action:
Just to give you a simple instance, you can simply voice any of these commands.
- To start cleaning, you can say: “Alexa, ask Roomba to start cleaning.”
- To stop cleaning, you can say “Alexa, ask Roomba to pause vacuuming.”
- To clean a specific room, just take a note of the room name (as stored on Roomba, and say: “Alexa, ask Roomba to clean my room”
You can also connect your Roomba to the Google Nest.
How to connect Roomba to Google Assistant
If you are a Google fan and you use the Nest instead of Alexa, you can still make use of this feature. The iRobot app can integrate Google Assistant the way it does Alexa. Alternatively, you can connect using your Google Home App.
Follow the steps below:
- Open the Google Home app.
- Tap Add (This can be found at the top of the home screen.)
- Tap Set up device.
- Select Have something already set up?
- Select iRobot.
- You’ll be redirected to the iRobot app, where permission is sought by google to link up accounts.
- Confirm and go back to the Home app.
Roomba not responding to Alexa
This could be a result of many things;
- It could be that there is not sufficient power in either of the device.
- Bad internet connection in either or both of the device (Check router connection and ensure both devices are connected to the internet
- Alexa fails to pair Roomba as a vacuum and reassigns it as an other device. (You can, however, reassign the Roomba as a vacuum just as you can reassign a plug as a light.)
- Outdated firmware; try a system update and see if it responds
How to connect Roomba to wifi
To connect your Roomba to a Wifi network, follow the steps below:
- Place the Base next to the Router
- Download the Roomba App
- Place the Roomba in Base
- Continue with App
- Choose to Network
- Connect to Network
- Pair Roomba
Roomba Alexa missing Authentication Token
If you receive this error while setting up your Roomba to Alexa; there is a short procedure that can help correct the bug, follow the next steps:
You can toggle the Sensi Alexa Skill in your Alexa App to check if that works.
Or you can follow these steps to toggle
- Open the Alexa App.
- Select More, then Skills & Games.
- Find the skill under Your Skills and select it.
- Press Disable Skill.
- Once disabled, select Enable To Use.
After re-enabling the skill, the link might be requested to link your account.
Conclusion
When using Roomba with Alexa, your cleaning will turn out easy that you might even forget about the Roomba and cleaning altogether.
The article above is tested and trusted to achieve the connection of Roomba to Alexa. However, if your run into some connectivity problems and you feel the content of this article is not sufficient to rectify this, you can contact iRobot via their help care service;
- Their website
- Or call them, at 1-800-727-9077