Roomba - one month later (or so)

Well,
it's been a month since I received my Roomba Scheduler from the Woot Off, and to be honest, I was not too impressed with the initial battery life.
Our Roomba is reconditioned which means it may have some slight cosmetic defects, but none I noticed. (and for a device that spends its life bumping into furniture and walls - slight cosmetic defects come with the territory)

What was more of a concern was the very short battery life. Even with the recommended initial charge session of 72 hours, it would only run for approximately 20 minutes before dying where it stood.

I read the forums over at roombareview.com, and tried all of the known working remedies for a battery charge issue, but even after letting it sit for a solid week on the charger, it still would not run longer than 20 minutes.

I finally broke down and called iRobot since the Roomba was still within the 90 day warranty period.
The voice mail prompts were kinda tricky - but after convincing the system that I had indeed tried the usual methods I was put in touch with a live human being.

After explaining to him what the problem was and what all I had tried - he agreed it was probably a bad battery and told me he was sending me a new one - at no charge under warranty.

The battery actually arrived the very next day!

I did the 72 hour initial charge cycle with this battery - and on the 4th day crossed my fingers and pressed "Clean". Not only was it still running at the magical 20 minute mark - but the power indicator was still bright "Green" when normally it would have been flashing "Red" by that point.

After a half hour I left the room but kept monitoring it (listening) and it kept running well over an hour and a half before it decided the area as clean and returned to the base.

In the past, whenever it decided the power level was low enough to warrant a return to the base, it usually ran out of juice 10 seconds or so later - which resulted in it expiring within sight of the base.

We have ran it a half dozen times now since receiving the new battery and it is now working perfectly!

iRobot of course announced a new and improved version of the Roombas soon after I received mine - but I have no regrets, especially considering the price I paid during the Wootoff for it.

Bought a Robotic Vacuum cleaning maid!

Yep - I'm now living in the world of George Jetson - got my own Robotic Vacuum cleaning Maid!
Well - sorta. Actually, it IS a robot - but all it does is vacuum. As far as it being a Maid - well, that is a just a "slight" bit of embellishment there, it actually resembles an overgrown pie plate on wheels ;-)

What is this wonderful invention of the future that is available today? It is a ROOMBA! Y'all can read about them HERE:

As a gadgeteer (no - that is NOT something like a mouseketeer!) who finds it difficult to resist buying techno-gadgets - I've long delayed taking the Roomba plunge until I was able to buy one inexpensively during the latest "Woot-Off" and received just it last week.

So far, the cats are pretty fascinated by it - and amazingly enough - are not afraid of it.
Unfortunately, the Roomba has no eyes, so in a Cat vs Roomba game of "Chicken" it's always the cat who flinches in the end and has to scamper out of the way.

There is a large hacking culture around these things, which I am only just beginning to dip my toes into.
It has a serial port which I am just DYING to connect a terminal up to - to be able to see what makes the Roomba tick, and if there is any way I can "improve" it :-)

Unfortunately, they have not made a stair climbing Roomba yet - so if you have more than a single floor to clean, you need multiple Roombas - unless you enjoy lugging them up and down stairs all the time...