Motor, track and wheel fault signals

A motor or wheel signal usually means one thing: something that should turn can't, or isn't turning easily. The robot's chip notices and stops, flashes, or beeps.

A jam is one common cause among several, and a full filter is another. Here's how to tell the difference.

Two motors, two kinds of fault

Inside an electric robot sit two motors: a pump motor and a drive motor¹. A fault light might point at either.

So read your manual's table carefully. "Pump motor" and "drive motor" can look alike on a light chart and need different checks.

What the signal usually points at

One maker-neutral repair guide says steady, repeating beeps are a motor-overload alarm, which fires when the impeller, a brush or a drive track cannot turn². That's one model family. Yours may use light instead of sound.

A maker's troubleshooting page for another robot lists a jammed impeller, a clogged suction mouth and a full debris compartment among the causes of slow or no movement. It lists a jammed wheel among the causes of a robot that doesn't cover the whole pool³.

Another maker's support page gives purple as "Solid Purple – Device is stuck"⁴. That's a robot stuck on something, not necessarily a broken motor.

A thread, plastic bag or large leaf in the tracks or around the brushes can block the drive motor, says one maker's support page⁵.

What you can check by hand

Do these only with the robot out of the pool, switched off and unplugged. If you haven't yet, run through the power-off checklist first.

One maker's advice is to turn the robot over, remove any obstruction, and check by hand that the tracks rotate freely⁵.

In practice that means:

• Look along both tracks for thread, hair, leaf stems or a small stone.
• Look around the brush ends, where the rollers meet the side housing.
• Turn each wheel or track gently. It should move without grinding.
• Check the suction opening and the filter, because a blocked flow can look like a weak motor.

Another maker's page puts the goal this way: clean the robot and remove the debris blocking the suction mouth, filter and wheels³.

Don't force anything. If a track won't turn by hand with nothing visible in the way, stop there.

When it's not a jam

One repair guide for an Aiper model points to a flooded motor in this case. The rotors all spin freely by hand, but the red flash continues. This is likelier still if you saw water inside the sealed body. It says a flooded motor is a repair-or-replace situation, not a reset².

Don't open sealed motor housings yourself. Check your manual, or contact the maker's support and give them the exact light pattern.

After the clear-out

Put the robot back in the pool per your manual and watch the first minute from the edge. If it moves as usual and the light stays normal, fine. If the same signal returns at once, don't keep trying.

If it stops partway on later runs, see the page on robots that quit partway. If the flow seems weak, see filter and intake warnings.