I have had a similar experience to yours. Opened my pool a few days ago and used my new Scuba S-1 for the very first time. I also noticed how it acted confused and there didn’t seem to be a pattern that I could detect. It also had a problem climbing up the steep incline from my 8’ deep end to the 3.5” shallow end.
The floor mode is pretty much for the flat bottom areas of my pool and it avoids the concave walls in the hopper of the deep end up to the bottom of the 90 degree side walls. It does those all in wall mode.
On day 2, it was like it learned my pool. It did the floors from side wall to side wall and, when it got ,to the steep incline, it continued to go back and forth like it did the floors and cleaned the entire incline going side to side. In wall mode, it did the 90 degree walls plus the concave sides of the hopper. When it got to the flat surface, it reversed itself and continued up the concave and 90 degree walls.
My only issues are the stairs and swim out where it gets into those areas and gets “stuck,” but works itself out.
All in all, I’m happy enough to keep it. I still have my suction side cleaner for backup and for very heavy cleaning but that will be once in a while. I’m now waiting for my Surfer S-1 skimmer as that’s the one that will be running every day for many hours as I hate seeing a single leaf or other debris floating on the surface. Now I’ll just let the Surfer do its thing.
FYI. - I’ve used it 3 times so far and it ran for a full 3 hours each time. The recharge took about 2 hours.
My advice, just put it in the pool and don’t fixate on watching it. At the end of the 2+ hours, your pool should be clean. Good luck with it.
