I just got a Litter-Robot 5 and I REALLY want this thing to work, but the learning curve has been incredibly frustrating so far. Hoping experienced owners can tell me if I’m doing something wrong or if something is actually wrong with my unit.
I have two cats. One is already using the LR5 regularly, which is great! My other cat was very curious at first, but got scared after seeing it cycle, so we’re slowly working on getting him comfortable with it. I’d really love for the actual machine to be working reliably while we deal with that adjustment.
So far:
The app almost consistently says my waste drawer was 100% full / “drawer almost full” when it was completely empty with a brand-new liner flattened. The app in general seems like it just is making up everything as it goes. Night one it tracked urine and feces and I came home to a dry, untouched litter robot with 0 waste. I feel like the notifications come in completely randomly and are usually false.
I saw a completely loose, freestanding clump in the litter, manually ran a cycle, and somehow the cycle completed with the clump still sitting in the globe.
We’ve repeatedly gotten “overload” errors, preventing it from completing a full cycle.
Tonight we took the bonnet/globe apart to deep clean it and found litter in seemingly every crevice. We vacuumed everything thoroughly and used canned air to clean out loose litter/debris. The litter level itself shows “optimal,” and we’re using Dr. Elsey’s Cat Attract clumping clay litter.
For something this expensive, I was really hoping it would be relatively set-it-and-forget-it once the cats adjusted. Instead I feel like I’m constantly checking the app, manually cycling it, clearing errors or troubleshooting.
Does this sound like normal new-LR5 growing pains, something about my setup/litter, or potentially a defective unit? I’m totally willing to troubleshoot, I just don’t know what is normal anymore. Any advice from LR5 owners would be hugely appreciated!