It was going to happen eventually. When our last working Roomba packed it in, it was only a matter of time before we got a new Roomba. Ever since we got our first one, we’ve used them on and off. At first it was all the time, and we even bought a second one. But then the batteries started to lose their recharging and they stayed parked. This was before the age of being able to find anything on Amazon, of course. Then we found new batteries and filters on Amazon and the robots sprang back to life. That is, until they actually packed it in. One couldn’t recharge any more (the battery was fine, but the charging circuitry died) and then the other refused to acknowledge that it was on the carpet.
I was looking around at Amazon, at London Drugs and then today at Costco they had a big stack of a couple of different models. We bought the 985, a higher-end one this time.
This one actually has a camera on it, that it uses to navigate and map the house. The old ones (and the less expensive current models like the e6 that was at Costco, too) just navigated by bumping off things and using random chance to ensure that they vacuumed everywhere. This one is methodical. It’s very cool. It also has a charging station that it parks at when it’s done.
It’s connected to WiFi and to Alexa so you can keep tabs on it, remote start it, the whole nine yards. Its default name was “Roomba” so I put it to the family to give it a name. It took all of five seconds for them to come up with…
Alexa, ask the Mystery Machine to start cleaning.
looks good!