djbmw
Well-known member
I'm not sure if I'm making this as a PSA,.. or a DIY but here's some history:
Neato Robotics manufactured a popular line of robot vacuums from ~2010 to 2021 that leveraged LIDAR, room mapping, lithium batteries,.. and much more. We purchased a couple of the D-series "Connected" vacuums that we use and love. Unfortunately, iRobot's Roomba - and many Chinese knock-off's meant that Neato couldn't get market share and in 2023 the company announced that it was shutting down operations. For 2 years following the shut down they maintained their servers, allowing customers to continue to use the robot's scheduling, customization, mapping, room selection, etc. settings.
In Q4 of 2025, however, all customers were informed that the servers were being shut down - rendering all remote control/access dead. The vacuum, for many, can only be operated now with a single push button at the top - which allowed the vacuum to perform EITHER a 'whole house' clean, or a 'spot clean' - whichever setting the button was last programmed to.
For those of you with a D-series Neato I'm here to say that many of them can be revived and you can now control them on-premise with a little bit of DIY work.
The specific details are provided on the following Github, but I was able to revive both of our D5's within the matter of an hour or so (the most time-consuming part is opening it up, and closing it carefully so that no wires get pinched).
Github Instructions:
github.com
I purchased a 3 pack of the ESP32-C3 Mini boards (** must have 4MB of memory) from Amazon for $20 CAD, followed the directions (Note, the pinout for the C3 Mini boards for the TX and RX is GPIO3 and 4 of the board,... not GPIO11 and 12), flashed the OpenNeato firmware and PRESTO! - full control over the vacuum again!
Once the Neato is open,.. find the 4 pin diagnostic port on the left side. I de-soldered the port so that I could directly solder my wires to each thru-hole:
Here's the ESP32-C3 mini board with Ground, 3.3 volts, TX (Black), and RX (White) connected.
Testing with the unit open to ensure remote connectivity:
Hot-glued in place:
And the app that's running directly on the ESP-32 unit, remotely accessible from within my network from any web-browser:
Hope that helps any of you with Neato vacuums that have been unable to use them since the beginning of this year!
Neato Robotics manufactured a popular line of robot vacuums from ~2010 to 2021 that leveraged LIDAR, room mapping, lithium batteries,.. and much more. We purchased a couple of the D-series "Connected" vacuums that we use and love. Unfortunately, iRobot's Roomba - and many Chinese knock-off's meant that Neato couldn't get market share and in 2023 the company announced that it was shutting down operations. For 2 years following the shut down they maintained their servers, allowing customers to continue to use the robot's scheduling, customization, mapping, room selection, etc. settings.
In Q4 of 2025, however, all customers were informed that the servers were being shut down - rendering all remote control/access dead. The vacuum, for many, can only be operated now with a single push button at the top - which allowed the vacuum to perform EITHER a 'whole house' clean, or a 'spot clean' - whichever setting the button was last programmed to.
For those of you with a D-series Neato I'm here to say that many of them can be revived and you can now control them on-premise with a little bit of DIY work.
The specific details are provided on the following Github, but I was able to revive both of our D5's within the matter of an hour or so (the most time-consuming part is opening it up, and closing it carefully so that no wires get pinched).
Github Instructions:
GitHub - renjfk/OpenNeato: Open-source replacement for Neato's discontinued cloud and mobile app.
Open-source replacement for Neato's discontinued cloud and mobile app. - renjfk/OpenNeato
github.com
I purchased a 3 pack of the ESP32-C3 Mini boards (** must have 4MB of memory) from Amazon for $20 CAD, followed the directions (Note, the pinout for the C3 Mini boards for the TX and RX is GPIO3 and 4 of the board,... not GPIO11 and 12), flashed the OpenNeato firmware and PRESTO! - full control over the vacuum again!
Once the Neato is open,.. find the 4 pin diagnostic port on the left side. I de-soldered the port so that I could directly solder my wires to each thru-hole:
Here's the ESP32-C3 mini board with Ground, 3.3 volts, TX (Black), and RX (White) connected.
Testing with the unit open to ensure remote connectivity:
Hot-glued in place:
And the app that's running directly on the ESP-32 unit, remotely accessible from within my network from any web-browser:
Hope that helps any of you with Neato vacuums that have been unable to use them since the beginning of this year!
Last edited: