Repairing the Rockrobo S55
A few years ago, I bought a Rockrobo S55, also known as Xiaomi S55.
As with everything related to my home automation, I wanted it to work
without the cloud; so I flashed it with Valetudo. Which is a wonderful
piece of software, as it allows for a much better integration with my home
automation.
Over the years, this purchase has given me a lot of satisfaction: it just
works, and even if now there are better models, I see no reason to switch to
something newer.
It is also very serviceable!
Over the time, I had few failures requiring some special operations; and
each time I was able to fix them just by buying the repair parts on Aliexpress
or Allegro. In particular, I had to fix the lidar motor, then the right
wheel, and finally the robot’s inability to recharge.
However, while the first two problems required a relatively small amount of
work (essentially: remove the broken part and replace with a new one), the
last one required a LOT of work. Specifically, it required removing a
fuse soldered on the motherboard and replacing it with a new one.
The very good tutorial on YouTube explains the whole process step by step,
but it still felt much more time-consuming than the other fixes, and
especially, quite above my skill level, because it included replacing a fuse
soldered on the mainboard.
Still, eventually I decided to try it – what did I have to lose? – so this
weekend, I finally sat down and decided to give it a try.
And now, finally, after a few hours of work, to see the robot charging correctly
is quite a nice feeling :)