3rd Times the Charm

We have a robo vacuum.  Actually we have 2, one the main floor and an older model in the basement.  The basement one was the first one I bought about 5 yrs ago.  It was a Black Friday special, pre-COVID.  I thought I'd try it out.  I called my cousin first if she had one.  And she said she's had 5.  She loves them!

It was good, picks up a lot of dust and crumbs.  Our house is all hardwood.  But these things were designed to go over multi-surface areas.  Carpet, tile, hardwood, rugs, cables, socks.  You name it.  It'll go over it.  And likely it'll get caught in the sweeper or the brushes.  What's really cool is that it goes under our stove and cleans up there too.  It works well, it picks up a lot of dust bunnies.  When I empty this the hopper of this unit after about 2 weeks, it's filled. 

This is the iRobot Roomba 671.  And I'd have it scheduled to clean 3x a week.

It's on its back cuz it wasn't working.   And I had to take photos to send to iRobot support.

This is the 3rd thing in our house to malfunction.  That's 3 appliances in our house in retirement mode.

This model used to be on our main floor.  We don't have a large foot print house so it would nearly clean the entire main floor, before it needed to go back to its base to recharge.

It's not an advanced robot.  In fact when I saw how it did its pattern.  I thought it was dumb, it would clean in this is a random star pattern.  It's not very efficient, but it does cover everything.  When it finds a wall though, it'll follow it.  And when it comes to a stair, it'll detect it and not go over.  These are 2 of the smart things it does.  Well a third is when it gets low on battery, it makes its way back to its base to recharge.

One Boxing Day a few years later, I ended up replacing this one on the main floor with another iRobot i3 model that maps the room and does a more linear pattern.  This unit has a hepa filter and is quieter and better suction.  I love it!  What an improvement.  I can schedule the various parts of the main floor to different schedules.  Hallway and Kitchen every day.  Living Room and Dining Room - M, W, Fr.

So I moved the less advanced 671 to the basement.  It's an easier room for it to clean.  It's rectangular and doesn't have many challenges to work around.   And it was effective there.

Recently I noticed it stopped executing it's cleaning schedule.  I checked and it was dead.  Battery wasn't charged.  I put it on the base and the light on the base would flash.  Great.  What did that code mean?

As a test, I put the unit on the upstairs base and it charged.  I put it back downstairs and let it run.  90mins it ran.  Battery was okay.  Turns out the unit itself is good,  It's the base.  Basically the non-robotic part was faulty. 

Not sure if my phone was listening to me.  But I found an i4 model on a really great sale.  So I bought it and if I couldn't get a replacement base 2nd hand, then I'd set up this one in the basement. 

We work out down there and for some reason dust seems to settle in the basement.  So eventually, I put this one on a cleaning schedule for the basement.  It's nice.  HEPA filter, and also a little tower that you activate and it tells the robot to keep away from this spot (2ft radius).  I didn't realize it would be included.

I'm not sure what to do with the 671, it just needs a base.  So I packed up and stored it in the garage and saved it from the rubbish bin for now.