Why was this not recalled and corrected?
@trwolfe Unfortunately, we do not have any official information from the manufacturer. We do know this problem is caused by the capacitors. If you wish, you can certainly contact the manufacturer for this information.
Sorry, wasnāt directed at robotshop. I have 2 and they are excellent when running, but Iāve had some issues and and Neato has been no help. This is the latest issue and it started a couple weeks ago. What a pita!
I have an engineer here willing to replace C10 with the capacitors mentioned in this thread. $50 and you pay shipping. Heās a tech from China working in my office for another year.
If you donāt want to do it, this will get you running again.
Of course, this assumes your bot has no other issues which we donāt check for.
FYI, I had the same issue. I replaced my 25v 100uF standard capacitor with a 25v 320uF capacitor for no other reason than it was the only one I had in the garage.
Seems to have fixed the problemā¦Neato is back to life.
I found this video very helpful. youtu.be/WR7yx-E1Y14. He used a 1000uF capacitor
Guys,
I posted my question few months ago and wondered why I got no answer. Today I realized there is a second page for this forumā¦ (:
Here is an update:
As I mentioned before, I replaced ALL 7 capacitors to 100uf, 35v according to advice I saw here. since then Neato wakes up properly.
However a new problem appeared: Neato complains about low batteries and stop working after few minutes due to low power.
I am sure the batteries are fine because I checked them with another Neato.
8.13V is the measurement of a single battery (1 of 2)
I saw advice here about a voltage regulator near C10 that might be hot. shall I try to replace it as well?
Thanks again,
Shaul.
āa voltage regulator near C10 that might be hot. shall I try to replace it as well?ā
I donāt think so. If its working fine, thereās no need to replace it.
If I were you, Iāll:
- drain the batteries using the other Neato
- place the batteries into that Neato again and tell it that these are ānew batteriesā
- leave it with the charger overnight
Just my two cents.
kc
Follow up on my 2015-04-03 12:45 post, about the XV-11.
Finally I replaced the SMD capacitors with leaded ones. The XV-11 starts normally !
The sad news is that the LCD was broken by my part time domestic helper (for job security ? lol).
The DC adapter was dead too. Itās really not justified to replace those parts.
My XV-11 motherboard has high reliability high temperature capacitors.
If anyone in Hong Kong needs it, he could get it for free.
I have pets. The best bet is to buy a newer Neato. However, Iāve been
waiting for the Dyson 360 eye for nearly one year. Although itās technologically
more advanced, it looks like itās vaporware 
kc
Hello all you electronic geeks. My husband calls me the household geek cuz I can usually fix stuff. But, I am stuck on this and have met my match. My momās Neato VX-21 started acting up after about a year (so out of warranty). Thought it was a battery issue, so change them. Updated the software. The LCD screen does not come on, but the green light illuminates. I took the back of and wiggled some wires that appeared to connect to the LCD screen. I was to the point of boxing it up and sending it off to be fixed when the screen came on! I charged it up and low and behold, it worked! It finished a cleaning cycle, and went back to the base. Yes!! But the next day, it was dead again, and nothing will bring it back to life. Any suggestions for someone who doesnāt know what a capacitor is???
sueginz, you may order a new Motherboard from RobotShop.
Product Code: RB-Nto-908, USD150.
Iām not affiliated with RobotShop at all.
Finding someone to replace the capacitor(s) for you is more economical.
Itās a design problem, I suggest that Neato should fix it for us.
hey
for the records I have the very same issue with a XV-15
Iāll ask my bro if he can fix this for me based on your advices
Same happened to me. Bought replacement batteries, but no luck. Figured a way to get it started again:
-
Try to connect the Neato to USB power (just USB to a wall charger). Press the power button an hold it for a whileā¦ try several times.
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If 1 does not workā¦ try to connect it to the charger base at the same time as you connect to USBā¦ againā¦ hold power button. Last time we have been for a vacation and the batteries were completely dead. This trick did it for me.
TerjeAT
This worked for me. I had removed the batteries and held the start button but it never woke up. I plugged in a USB cable to the wall charger, held the start button for about 30 seconds and the LCD came on. I had to reset the clock and now it is on the charger because it said the batteries were low. We will see what happens in a few hours.
I had the same problem and removing and reconnecting the batteries worked a few times and then it woundnāt respond. I replaced the C10 capacitor and the other 100uf capacitors on the motherboard and mine is working fine so far.
Has this mother board problem been corrected in the newer production models?
@Tate Neato has stopped the production of this motherboard since they are now focusing on the Botvac Series. We cannot confirm for sure if this problem has been corrected, but it does seems like it.
Thanks for the thread! My XV25 showed same symproms: dead, dim green light, new batteries - no help. Opened up, replaced the C10 cap, and got life again. Iām currently waiting for mail to bring the right size of cap, then can put the thing together again, but Iām confident that the unit has a few more years of service life ahead.
Hi, Principal Systems Engineer here (Electrical Engineering, all kinds of circuit boards included and Firmware)ā¦
First, Electrolytic capacitors tend to loose capacitance due to electrolyte drying up. Elevated temperature speeds up the process. Caps are usually rated to some temperature, like 105C, and total hours, like 2500. It is not a lot, especially if the cap is constantly powered and heated. C meter can prove that the cap lost its capacitance. Keep in mind that 2500 hours rating allows significant capacitance drop (like 30% to 50%! depending on manufacturer)
Second, Generally you donāt want to replace all capacitors with bigger voltage/capacitance - bigger is not always better. They have undesirable difference in other characteristics (higher ESR, more leakage). Also circuit may depend on time constant (time it takes to charge the cap), and in-rush current (peak current that happens when voltage is first applied to the cap). Changing these can and most likely will lead to messing up operation, which is probably what happened to people who blindly replaced all caps with same 100uF type and got dead robot. It is a no-no in electrical engineering. Do not replace whatās not broken. At least do measure max. voltage on it and measure or infer what kind of max. current it has to support for the load. That is part of EE education how to choose capacitors properly and I wonāt go into it here. No-brainer way is to study chip part number and look up its reference design.
Best approach is to replace with same capacitance/rating as original, but higher grade capacitor (more expensive). Manufacturers do save pennies by using crappy caps. Even better approach is to replace with right-sized and right rated capacitors, but that requires in-depth analysis of the circuit in which the capacitor is used. It can be safe to bump the capacitance up by ~2x, but do it one at a time. In Neato those are all power supplies, as there seems to be no analog on the control board, so the rated voltage should be about 2x~3x of the max. actual voltage on the node. 25V for 3.3V rail seems like an overkill, but they might have chosen it for other reasons.
Another tip: it is safe and easy to add caps in parallel (minding the polarity). If the original cap had dried up and lost capacitance, it contributes very little and can be left on the board. Usually there is a surface-mount ceramic cap for each electrolytic one (for high-frequency bypass), which can be used as a spot to attach a parallel electrolytic cap. Follow the traces on the board and use ohmmeter to confirm, usually it is the closest one. You donāt even need to unscrew the board from the base to do this rework if you know which place to mount new caps. I added 200uF 10V to C10 rail this way and it resurrected my Neato XV-12. I left long leads, put some tubing, bent them so the cap can lie on its side nearby, soldered the leads, then hot-glued the cap to the board so it wonāt shake the solder joints loose.
I also learned that charger is not functional using the side connector (may be dependent on firmware version). I used dock to charge new batteries.
FIXED: XV-21 āLow Intensity Green Light of deathā problem
My XV-21 experienced the same problem. At first it would occasionally not wake up from sleep mode. All I needed to do is hold the power button for 15 sec or so. After several months or so it stopped helping. I figured that plugging it into USB port and holding a button would help. It did, for several months. Then it stopped waking up at all. Nothing would help. It sure looked like a capacitor was dying a slow death.
Stamservās post above confirmed that my guess about the capacitor was the right one. I ordered the 100uF 35V capacitors from DigiKey (Part# UVY1V101MED1TD as per Stamservās post).
The bad one was the one marked C10 and located between U4 (3.3V) and U1 (5.0V) Voltage Regulators. Once I replaced it, the CPU powered up perfectly fine. This capacitor indeed get pretty hot because of it physical proximity on the PCB to the U4 3.3V Voltage regulator and seems to lose capacitance over time as a result.
I was then faced with a new problem. Neato kept on reporting that the Battery was empty, even though there was 13.7V available. I left it charging overnight through the direct plug port (right beside USB plug) but it made no difference. Well, it turned out that the direct plug and the charger pads plug are not created equal. Once I plugged the charger pad and made it charge from the charging station, the Neato started charging fine.
Everything looked good, but when I put everything together and tried running the vacuum, it complained that both wheels were stuck. This was odd. I didnāt have this problem before.
After probing the voltages on the Drain pin of FETs (Power gates, marked Q1ā¦.Qx) on the board and the Output pins of the Voltage Regulators (Marked U1ā¦Ux on the board) I narrowed it down to U1 Voltage regulator (78M05C). I ordered the part for digikey (497-1203-1-ND L78M05CDT-TR IC REG LDO 5V 0.5A DPAK). I had to use a heat gun to take the regulator off the board, it just would not come off when I just used the soldering iron to heat it up. The whole back of it is soldered so heat gun, unfortunately was a must. Once the regulator was finally replaced, my Neato XV-21 was moving again like new!
FYI: Used this video from roboshop.com to disassemble it youtube.com/watch?v=G8G72NAppKY . Still ended up with 3 extra screws when I put everything together
Hi Nickolka, congratulations !
I bought a new motherboard last year for my XV-21. It worked for a couple of months and the same old problem appeared again. To avoid the shipping and packing troubles, I decided that Iāll not send the board back for repair or replace. Moreover, it looks like thereās a high probability that the replacement could not last long. Iāll find time to replace the capacitorā¦ Will post the result here when finished.