[Robotgroup] osmo/hacker

[Vern Graner]

Aaron Richardson wrote:
> I don't have carpet on my floors and it seems to do
> a good job of cleaning. Something I am missing?

Uhm... carpet? :)

We have a roomba, one of the first ones available. The thing we don't
like is the battery life. We have gone through 3 batteries (at ~$80.00
each!). The charging circuit cooks the batteries to death as far as I
can tell.

You have to manually plug in the charger, then manually unplug it when
the charge is complete. If you leave it plugged in continuously, the
batteries get hot then their run time gets shorter and shorter. I think
ours now runs ~10 mins b4 it needs a charge. :(

I think the new roombas have an auto-dock and a better charge circuit
that drops to trickle charge to avoid over charging, but I don't know
for sure.

As for cleaning, on carpet, it does a pretty good job of getting the
*surface* level stuff, but it doesn't have enough horsepower to really
beat the carpet and produce a deeper clean. In fact, IIRC, the docs for
the roomba stated that you should vacuum with a "regular" vac once in a
while to get the stuff the roomba misses.

And, FWIW, the roomba has an *astonishing* ability to find every single
phone cord, power cord, shoe lace, yo-yo string, headphone cord,
Ethernet cable, carpet tassel or blind pull in the house. After
discovering one of these things, it creates an amazing Gordian knot deep
inside its body, stops, then crys for help. :)

Vern

-- 
Vern Graner CNE/CNA/SSE    | "If the network is down, then you're
Senior Systems Engineer    | obviously incompetent so why are we
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Austin Office 512 328-8947 | you, so why are we paying you?" ©VLG