A few months ago, my trusty Roomba stopped working. It would start and just stop after a few seconds of flailing. I thoroughly cleaned all the cat hair out of it, but still no dice. I thought the battery was not holding a charge anymore, so I borrowed a spare one from Tony. That didn’t help either.
I discovered that there’s a cool diagnostic mode for the Roomba. While interesting, that didn’t show anything wrong. It was time to dig in deeper.
I pulled out an arsenal of screwdrivers and started pulling things apart, targeting the right wheel which seemed to be the troublesome one. Screw after screw came out until I got to the bottom of it. I cleared out a bit more fur, but not much else. Getting it back together was a challenge. Worse, it turned even less. I gave up, leaving my Roomba half-assembled and dead in the garage.
I hoped to get a replacement someday. That day came sooner than expected when Dealnews alerted me to refurbished Discovery on Amazon. With a $25 discount, my A9 discount and Associates referral, I got it for about $125. That’s a great deal over the $279 for a new one.
On Saturday I set it up. Apart from a small scratch, it looked new. Even better, it was a DiscoverySE, not just a Discovery! (Other than a sleeker design, the only difference though is a charging wall mount, which I probably won’t use.)
They have improved the design quite a bit over my Roomba Pro. The bin is a lot bigger and opens much more easily. It does a better job of covering the area, though it seems to have more trouble crossing the threshold between the dining room and living room. One of the best features is the home base, which it is supposed to “find” when it’s done cleaning or out of juice. Tony said it didn’t really work, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find it charging itself after I left it to do its thing for a while.
I’m still strangely fascinated with way it bumbles around and I’m apt to watch it for a while when it starts off. Go little roomba, go! Get in that corner! No, don’t get stuck in over there! Yeah, you escaped!
Supposedly having these robots allows you to be more productive by making the robots do the menial labor. That probably doesn’t work if you spend your time cheering on your robots.
Now, all I need is a silly MOOBA costume for my Roomba. Err, maybe I shouldn’t say that considering what happened with the supermagnet.
Roomba’s cousin Scooba will be my little pet soon. I’m glad it’s finding homebase
I adore my Roomba! We bought one for a friend’s birthday, he’s enchanted by it as well. You should have seen how fascinated his 2 year old was. The costume’s a bit scary though.
Yeah, my Roomba Pro stopped working like 4 months after the purchase, with the same mysterious diagnostics producing no problems. Would be interesting to see what’s the lifetime of this new model they’ve got.