The Roomba

As I posted yesterday, I FINALLY opened my new Roomba on Friday. Josh had told me that he just opened his up, pushed the button and it went. My experience was not quite that easy. I got it out, pressed the button and nothing. Hmmm... I read all the instructions, looked online and even called the customer support people - nothing. I thought for sure this was my punishment for leaving it hanging in the box for so long. I decided to just let it sit on the charger and see what happened. About an hour later, it starts talking to me..."Error 5, Error 5, Error 5". I look it up online and it turns out that when I pulled out the plastic to make the battery connection, a small piece remained inside and messed up the connection. I fixed it and it was time to Roomba!


Having never seen a Roomba in action, I didn't know what to expect. It is different, that's all I can say to describe it. It starts out in a circular pattern and then as it "runs into things", it starts a very random pattern. We have a lot of toys in our house and so the Roomba had a lot of "distractions", but it seemed to have a method to its madness. The Roomba does GREAT on our laminate flooring, and it goes seamlessly onto our rugs and carpet (although it goes a tad bit slower on carpet).

Monday I put it to the test though. Levi has a rice table at school and so I thought I would let him play with some rice at home. Yea, it didn't go so well and I had rice EVERYWHERE in my living room. This was a test for the Roomba! I set the thing down in the middle of the mayhem and let it go to work. And work it did! Except for the very edge of the wall, it picked up the rice. Levi had spilled A LOT of rice though and so I did have to empty the chamber 3 times, but it got it up.
Note: That middle pile is where I opened the chamber and I spilled some of the rice.

I still haven't tried the automatic programming yet. I'm letting it run around the house while I'm home because I want to make sure this doesn't happen while I'm gone:


I also need to learn to set up these "lighthouse" things which keep the Roomba in a certain room for a certain amount of time. Right now, it goes all over the house and it can't do the whole house before it returns "home" (or "parks" as Levi says) to recharge.


If you have solid surface floors or pets (which we don't - not an animal lover here), I think it is worth the investment. Otherwise, you might check with someone who has carpet. I'll post updates as I encounter them.


Now, I'm going to see how many days I can go without vacuuming - probably not too long as Levi loves to play with play dough! Oh, and Levi had Spiderman and The Incredible Hulk ride around on the Roomba - pretty funny.