Trouble with S8: no onboarding traffic

[assaron]

Hi, I'm trying to free my Roborock S8, but have troubles at the onboarding stage. When running onboarding script I get stuck at a stage, where the vacuum connects to my main WiFi (I can ping it by IP), but I just get "Waiting for the server to observe new onboarding traffic..." message from the script afterwards. Any ideas on what could be the problem and how to debug it?

Here is my command (redacted):

uv run start_onboarding.py --server api-roborock.redacted.com --timezone America/Chicago \
    --ssid redacted --password `cat wifi.pwd` --admin-password `cat admin.pwd` \
    --cst CST6CDT,M3.2.0,M11.1.0 --country-domain us

[Lash-L]

Hey @assaron - what version of the repo are you using?

How do you have your network set up and the certificate set up? Do you get anything in the logs/ if you go to your admin url with https, does it work?

[assaron]

Ok, it seems it connected, but that was a bit strange.

I'm using version from yesterday (0f49678). I could connect to the https://api-roborock.redacted.com:555/admin page from my browser. I have set up the static dns entry on my router (but it also gave out non-local DNS servers in DHCP too, I'm not sure how bad it is — there is a mention that there should be no external servers at all).

One thing that might be a problem initially: my external mqtt server was down. Still after I fixed my mqtt I had to wait a couple of minutes (33 "Waiting for" messages) for it to work. Also after the public key was established, I got stuck for a while in the loop:

Still waiting for this machine to reach the main server again...
Status for S8: samples=2, public_key=True, connected=False, state=ready
Public key is ready. Run one more pairing cycle so the vacuum connects.
The public key is ready. Do one final pairing cycle to finish the connection.

Reset the vacuum Wi-Fi, connect this machine to the vacuum Wi-Fi, then press Enter to send onboarding.

I was reconnecting, but got the same message. Finally, after I waited for a while, the vacuum said "WiFi connected" and after another try from the script it also said that everything's OK.

[Lash-L]

Yeah there is a weirdness with some devices where it takes a long time for it to successfully finish a onboarding cycle. I'm not sure why, but it can take a few minutes, especially on the last run when you have the public key.

[assaron]

I think it would be nice to adjust the notice that it may take a while in the script (I was reading the 5 minutes part as the deadline for me to reconnect to wifi, not as it can take as long to get the messages). And for the actual onboarding, I guess there should be a similar logic that waits for the connection to succeed?

I'll also try to sniff the traffic to check what the vacuum is doing when connecting, maybe it'll give some insights into why it's so slow.

Unrelated question: with this server, is it possible to extract the map and real-time position of the vacuum?

[Lash-L]

Unrelated question: with this server, is it possible to extract the map and real-time position of the vacuum?

It's stored on the vacuum - not the server. So if you call the mqtt message of 'get_map_v1' you can get it back. You can use python-roborock to help with this