2 new lessons about our Roomba 'Spot'

Of all the smart things in my house (aside from the real life people in it, obviously) has to be our little robot vacuum, "Spot".  Our Roomba i7+.


It's probably the least used of all the smart tech around, but just how readily available it is to do a chore and help do its part to keep our house clean.

Here we are at almost 9 months old, and we're still learning a couple things about our little pal.  

Hopefully, by sharing this, I can save you a bit of a "oh man" moments we had recently.

First up, Spot does not like toothpicks.

They really do recommend that you pick up cords and other medium sized items when it cleans.  And we'd gone through and made sure things bigger than a quarter are picked up.  It's only got so much oomph I thought.

Really, my guess is that something a little bigger are going to get caught up in the rollers and wreak havoc - as we found out with toothpicks.

I didn't know someone had spilled toothpicks, and cleaned most of them up, except one had rolled under a hope chest and Spot found it.

How we found out Spot found it, was that it was making a bit of a different whirring noise.  No worries usually.  Then I flipped it upside down to help with a bit of maintenance, I saw that the toothpick had gotten into the roller well, lodged itself sideways and punctured the roller.. which, when then spinning caused it to just slice that roller into 2 parts.

Wow.

Lesson learned.

Second lesson is that they don't like those carpet deodorizers.

We'd had Spot do some runs in the basement now and again, but not as much as it's where the craft room is and can be a bit of a lot of threads or the odd needle (see the above lesson, luckily we hadn't experienced anything).

But our son was having a get together with friends and it was the first real one in over 18 months due to the pandemic... we're all vaccinated, and it was going to be something fun.  So, let's clean up well.

Normally, in a deep clean we like to powder out that carpet deodorizer before we vacuum so that it helps out with some of that just worn in stuff/smells.

Spot got 2 minutes in and complained he was full, or clogged.  

A little powder we dusted around, but sure enough, his little compartment was nearly full.

Did a little more reading (meant to BEFORE we sent Spot, but forgot) and it turns out you shouldn't due to the fine particulate dust - it could also get in the gears and cause some long term issue... let alone a little bit goes a long way in filling that bin.

Spot got the afternoon off while I manually vacuumed like a neanderthal and then gave Spot a little deep cleaning to help rid it of the powder.


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