u/unknowclown357

I know this is a very domestic robot problem, but it’s weirdly one of the better examples of “autonomy meets reality” in my house. The robot can map fine. It can avoid the big furniture. It can find the dock. Great. Then real life enters the arena. Dog water bowl moved 18 inches. Kid drops a hoodie in the hallway. Work call starts early. Cat decides the charging dock is suspicious. Suddenly the clean run that was supposed to take 42 minutes is now 68 minutes with three pauses and me acting like pit crew because the side brush ate a bread tie. What I’m trying now is less “clean the whole house” and more tiny missions. Kitchen after breakfast. Entryway after school pickup. Living room only after pets are fed. Bedroom never during nap time because I enjoy being alive. The interesting part is that scheduling around pets, kids, and work feels less like a software feature and more like human robot traffic control.

I’m curious if anyone here has treated home cleaning robots this way, almost like task planning with messy dynamic obstacles, not just consumer convenience. What signals would actually help? Motion sensors? Calendar hooks? Pet feeding times? Or are we still mostly relying on humans to know when the robot should not be brave?

Lately I have been traveling for work a fair bit, mostly hotel wifi situations, and sometimes I want to watch stuff that's not available in my region.

So I've been bouncing around between free VPNs on my Windows laptop for a while and figured I'd ask here if anyone has any better options.

Below are what I've tried so far:

Proton, everyone recommends it and I get why. Feels trustworthy. But the free server count is tiny and during evenings the speed tanks pretty hard. Also the free version doesn't let you pick a specific country, which is rough if you actually need to change location.

Windscribe, the data cap is the main issue. if you're not paying attention, you'll burn through it in a day. decent app otherwise.

X-VPN, the windows free version has unlimited data and no ads which surprised me. Small downside is that the connection sometimes takes a moment to establish, but once it's on it's been solid.

So right now I'm rotating between Proton and X-VPN. Anything else worth trying that works well on Windows? Most threads here focus on mobile so it's hard to find good desktop recs.