To answer a couple of your questions:-
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The ST integration does not affect the Neato Botvac Connected cleaning patterns at all. It’s more of a remote triggering of ‘clean’ and ‘stop’ commands along with status updates into a SmartThings. This gives the ability to pair the Neato Botvac with something like Rule Machine to trigger a clean when everyone is away for example.
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The setup is not trivial. See [DEPRECATED] Neato Botvac Connected + Raspberry PI + ST . Even though I have tried to make the Raspberry Pi setup instructions as easy to follow as I could, I would say that sometimes things don’t always go according to plan and a level of comfort with a linux environment is helpful. If you’re feeling brave though, then this community is a great resource for assistance.