Roomba: It works great, when it works.
By john on Nov 29, 2008 in Home Automation, featured
I have a cat. I love my cat, and I hate my cat. I love her for the reason most people (cat lovers, anyways) love their cats – she’s unbelievably cute and cuddly, curls up with me when I’m watching TV, reading a book or doing anything that keeps me in one place for an extended period of time. I HATE her because she gets fur EVERYWHERE… and I’m tired of vacuuming on a daily basis.
A few months ago, I noticed that my friend Jason (Hi Jason!) had a Roomba from iRobot. For those who are unaware, the Roomba is a robot vacuum that can be set to vacuum on a regular basis at a scheduled time. This seems to me to be a pretty awesome idea – a robot that can do what I don’t want to – vacuum up my cat’s fur every day.
While out with my Fiance last night we ended up at Bed Bath and Beyond, and on a whim decided to see if they carried the Roomba. Sure enough, they did. With a shiny 20% off coupon in hand I made my decision to finally get one. And so I did.
After letting it charge overnight, and cleaning the junk that cluttered the floor, I pressed the button to get it started cleaning and, sure enough, it backed out of it’s dock and started on it’s way. Except after a few seconds it stopped and gave me a “oh shit I stopped working” noise. Pressing the clean button again gave me a message to check the “Cliff” sensors. After a few times of this it became obvious that Roomba was having some issues.
I decided to try it on my hardwood flooring and low and behold, it worked like a charm. And completely avoided my rug.
A look on the Internet yielded that Roomba has problems with rugs with certain patterns, especially where you have dark colors next to light colors. This causes it’s cliff sensors (the sensors that help it avoid falling from one elevation to another, as if going off a cliff) to falsely identify a cliff, and attempt to avoid it.
The good news is, there’s a fix. What I ended up doing was taping some white paper over the cliff sensors. Sure enough, Roomba passed over the carpet with nary a pause, and my robotic friend will now take over my daily vacuuming duties.
This is a viable solution for me because I don’t have any cliffs that the roomba would fall off – it operates on the first floor of the house. For those who have this issue with a Roomba on the second floor, or where there are cliffs, will have to be more creative in how they tackle this issue. A Virtual Wall might solve that problem of falling off a cliff in those situations.
I like my Roomba so far. Especially since he scares the ever living crap out of my cat (and seems to have a knack for heading straight for her regularly). It was incredibly funny to me when she climbed on top while it was in it’s dock, accidentally turning it on. Bet she won’t be doing THAT again.
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