roomba? anyone got one?

[Moskus]

No, sorry. I got sick instead...

But you are talking as if there's doubt. You need this machine!
I absolutely love it, and WAF is sky high. The only thing missing from a home automation point of view is that it cannot be controlled remotely.

But besides of that it's worth every penny.

[fran_joel]

Ok thanks buddy. I will very likely go ahead with the purchase.

Sorry to hear that you're sick. Hope you're getting better...
Best of luck to you.

[drozwood90]

My issue was, my wife would not use it. She said it took her just as long to vacuum as it was to run this. Of course, what I could not convince her of, was you could set up a room (which you would have had to do anyway to manually run the vac), then turn the roomba on and leave / do something else.

She also made statements that lead me to believe that made me think she thought dirt only magically appeared the day OF the vacuuming, since what does doing maintenance vacuuming HELP?? However, after showing her how MUCH the roombas were picking up (I would run them every day, but in various places in the house...then run the real vac. on Saturday), she said wow, but wouldn't change her mind...she is stubborn like that. Nothing can EVER be her fault. (wow she reads this post, I'm dead!). And when it is her fault, I need about as much evidence as someone trying to convict a murderer!

Long story short, since she gave up helping me 100% (not even run the manual one) and I could not do the vacuuming totally myself, I gave up the roombas and sold them...at least now, if I remind her once a week (the HS can not or she gets mad...(!?), she will run swiftly through the house in areas the roomba would have cleaned (not moving ANYTHING since if something is on the floor, obviously it can NOT EVER get ANY dirt under it...EVER, no dust, nothing!). So, then when I can once every 1-2 weeks, I do a good cleaning. I don't understand why she fights this so much.

I'm glad you (moskus) have such HIGH WAF on that!

--Dan

[dschoppe]

Guys,

We've tried the roomba in the past but had problems using it in our kitchen where base cabinets have an overhang 3.5" above the floor. This allowed the roomba to wedge itself underneath and the little ir dome on top of the roomba was prone to marring the lower edge of the cabinet overhang in this case. The specs on the neato state 4" high but I suspect that includes the top dome so I wonder if the main deck is also high enough to prevent entry beneath the cabinets?

Thanks,
Don

[Moskus]

My issue was, my wife would not use it. She said it took her just as long to vacuum as it was to run this. Of course, what I could not convince her of, was you could set up a room (which you would have had to do anyway to manually run the vac), then turn the roomba on and leave / do something else.

I was sceptical, but after the first week sheek was hooked. Being able to multitask ("I can vacuum when I do something else") is her favorite thing.

It's supposed to be my task to vacuum, but she does not complain when she does it.

Guys,

We've tried the roomba in the past but had problems using it in our kitchen where base cabinets have an overhang 3.5" above the floor. This allowed the roomba to wedge itself underneath and the little ir dome on top of the roomba was prone to marring the lower edge of the cabinet overhang in this case. The specs on the neato state 4" high but I suspect that includes the top dome so I wonder if the main deck is also high enough to prevent entry beneath the cabinets?

Thanks,
Don

How deep is the overhang? The roomba is 3.2" (8.2 cm) high up to the "platform" and vacuums my overhang fine (but that's 11 cm high).

[Olbrit]

Don, I use "Bumper Height Extenders" on my Roomba and Scooba and those fixed the wedging problem for me. (Got them off Amazon). Hope that helps.

[dschoppe]

Moskus,

The overhang is a couple of inches deep and 3.5 inches high, and I think the cabinets in the master bath are slightly lower. Maybe I'm remembering incorrectly and it was the bathroom cabinets that posed the problem. In any case, I no longer have the roomba.

The platform dimension you gave of 3.2in, is that for the roomba or the new neato?

Olbrit, thanks for the extender tip. Maybe they're available for the neato too if needed.

Thanks,
Don

[Moskus]

The platform dimension you gave of 3.2in, is that for the roomba or the new neato?

That is for the Neato. I don't have a Roomba anymore either (it did a too poor job, especially compared to the Neato).

Olbrit, thanks for the extender tip. Maybe they're available for the neato too if needed.

They have some magnetic strips, but I believe they need to be placed on the floor (but may be hidden under carpets, etc).

[outbackrob]

Roomba is better

The Neato is neato with the whole laser thing. It is much more efficient with time than the Roomba, I'll give it that. BUT, as far as actual cleaning, the Roomba picks up more stuff. My neighbor has a Neato X11 (I think that is the number) and we put it up against my refurbished Roomba 530 (I got off Woot). We have a cat so we used my house for the test. The Neato was finished MUCH faster, but left cat hair everywhere. The Roomba took forever (It seems like forever when you are waiting on it, but we usually just push the button as we are leaving the house....) but didn't miss a crumb or a hair.

While the Neato is a bit more high tech with the laser and the room plan, but the Roomba goes over the same spot (from different angles) multiple times and picks up more stuff.

The Roomba just picks up more stuff. ...and that's the whole point!

Rob

[Moskus]

Strange. Most reviews state different. ;-)

Replace the "squeegy" if you have an older XV-11, and the efficiency will greatly improve.

[travisdh]

Hello.

Whilst i don't have the Rooma, I do have the samsung Navibot which is comparable. I do find it works reasonabally well, picking up hairs and dirt and stuff, In our house it runs every day to every second day since we have two cats and after a few runs it has to be emptied out. In my case it gets about 45 mins to an hour before it goes back to recharge but that is not shocking.

For your enjoyment i have attached / linked to a youtube video i uploaded of how the cats react to the Navibot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayN509bJ1mo

The Navibot gets turned on by USB-UIRT as required which is handy as it does not have the scheduling function that operates daily (you can set it to start in x hours, but not recurring).

[w.vuyk]

Old thread jump......
I am preparing to buy a roomba 780. I see in the specs it is accepting IR and if you want to spend the money RF.
I have a IR unit nearby so I am guessing I could at least give a CLEAN signal when the house is empty. Other controls will not be possible unless a RFXCom or such device could send signals.

did anyone have experiences with this so far?

Wim

[travisdh]

Whilst not a Roomba, I have a samsung Navibot which is similar.
My system does exactally what you are suggestion, I connected my and My Wife's phones to Google Latitude and then when we are not at home I have a global Cache Wifi 2 IR unit which sends the Clean signal (Auto) to the Vacuum, and away it goes.

It works well for the most part, but I have found there are a few little things that make it slightly harder (but not impossible). I don't know if this is just samsung or all Vacuums but mine goes into Sleep mode, where after which you have to send the Power IR signal, wait for it to start (about 10 seconds) then you can send the Auto signal for cleaning. The issue I had was it was difficult to work out when it was in awake mode vs sleep mode, so if i sent the power signal to bring it out of standby mode, and it was awake it would put it in sleep mode and not vacuum.

My work around was to send a recharge signal, because it was already on the dock it would receive it, but do nothing (and reset the sleep timer) keeping the vacuum awake.

I am sure there are more reliable ways of determining if it is in sleep or awake mode (e.g. Current Monitoring) but it worked for me.

So to sum up, they can work quite well with IR, provided you can use a blaster or something that will send the signal far enough for the vacuum to see, and you may have some issues with sleep mode, which may require a keepalive signal, or some other monitoring.

[w.vuyk]

travisdh,

Thanks for your response. As far I understand the roomba should respond to the clean signal without a wakeup, but of course you never know until you play with it. But I guess that is also the fun part of new devices

Thanks!

Wim

[collegeboyslive]

with roomba you can buy a really neat device, it plus into the hidden serial connector on the roomba and uses bluetooth to make a wireless serial connection to homeseer, then its a simple case of sending a clean, a dock or other cpomments via the sendtocomport command, to control it