Becoming a (vacuum) Robot Overlord

A year or so ago, I started on my journey to become a Vacuum Robot Overlord.

I saw that the iRobot E5 series was on sale, and purchased one.

It turns out that it was a good idea to not purchase the more expensive model that will empty itself.  We have dogs and cats that shed a lot.  And the rollers need to be cleaned of the dog hair on every run, more on that later on.

Among our pets we have a Chinchilla, and in spite of putting up guards on the cage, somehow still some of the mess gets out each day.  The E5 robot is very good at cleaning that up.

The E5 series is a cheaper model, pretty much appears to sort of just wander around the rooms until it eventually covers everything.  This seemingly random movement can be of frustration if you want to do a spot clean up.  Many times if you place the robot near a spill and turn it on, it will immediately turn around and run away.

The E5 did a good job, but because it does not do stairs, I ended up getting one for the upstairs so that I would not need to be carrying it up and down the stairs.  I also got one for the basement.

The upstairs and main floor robots are both run on weekdays, and based on the amount of dust and pet hair that they are removing daily it seems to be well worth running them.

Now if only there was a model that could clean toilets.

Interactions With The Pets

For the most part the Animals were not upset about the robot.  They followed it around for about a week, and then decided that it was just one of those things that they had to put up with, and for the most part just kept out if its way.  Merlin the cat would stalk it, but never attacked it.

Merlin also figured out that if the robot bumped into him, it would just change direction, so Merlin stopped bothering to even keep out of its way.

We did have the robot running one time when my wife got a phone call, so she used the tablet application to stop the robot.  Sparky, one of the dogs immediately went over to robot and started barking at it for having stopped.

And another time, Merlin was seen to have walked over to where the robot was charging and apparently intentionally hit the start button.  He then sat down a few feet and seem to have lost interest in the robot.  Since then there have been no repeats of a robot being started by him.

Robot Proofing The House

I soon learned the hard way that actually running the robot required essentially baby proofing the house.

It is easy to damage the dark green sweeping roller.  And while that roller is a consumable part that is expected to be replaced eventually, it is only sold as in a kit of the those parts, not individually.  I went through at least 3 of these rollers in the first 3 months.  Third party rollers are available cheaper, but their quality may vary greatly and some reviews indicate that they have had problems with fit and excessive noise when using them.

IRobot expects the rollers to last from 6 months to a year depending on use.  Now that I know to do walkthrough before running the robot, I am getting at least that amount of use out of it.   If the water bowl for the pets is too full, the robot can cause it to spill on the floor, and that can make a mess in the robot.

There can be no strings, cables that are small enough for the robot to ingest with in its reach on the floor.

Most electrical power cords are not an issue, but it is best to protect them with a floor protector so that the robot will just run over them.  There are also cord organizers that will stick on to standard baseboards, TV/Computer desks that will help organize power, or CATV and ethernet cables.  Some of them will become almost invisible.  I already had some in use just because it looks much better than having the cords running along the wall.

USB cables are good for mutual assured destruction.  I assume the same for earphone and other small cables.

These can be sometimes organized with combinations of 3M Command products. Velcro One-Wrap thin ties, and twist ties.

Cross-stitching floss, dental floss, ribbons, etcetera, will destroy the blades of the dark green sweeping roller.  While the roller can still be used with some damage, it will greatly shorten its life.  Dental floss can even cut the roller in half.

And of course you do not want the Robot to run over anything wet.

Ribbon like material will be sucked into the rollers and other moving parts and can jam them up good.

So as I wrote before, before running the robot vacuum, you need to do a walk through to make sure that there is nothing that will hurt it.

The next issue is that there are areas where the robot will get stuck or hung up.  If the furniture has a gap at very close to the size of the robot, the robot can get wedged into it.  What I do to fix that is to get a bit of relatively cheap trim like a Polystyrene Stop Molding that is available in white or wood grain, and so far the wood grain has matched.  The white can be painted if needed.  The polystyrene molding can be easily cut to size.  I use 3M Command "Small Pairs" on them to allow the board to be easily removed and replaced for cleaning behind it.

And finally there are things that the Robot can run up on and then get stuck.  In most cases these are pet toys left on the floor that need picked up before a run.  I do have a pedestal fan in a bedroom that the robot will always get stuck on.  The fan is not very heavy, so I just put it on the bed and then do the floor check before starting the robot.

The robot has a side sweeping brush that looks a lot like a weed whacker.  This sometimes gets caught on the carpet fringes, and also can get tangled with strings as such.  Getting caught on the carpet fringe is rare, but when it happens, you may need to use a screw driver to detach it from the robot to untangle it.  That brush is also considered a consumable item and is expected to periodically need replacement.

Emptying And Cleaning

After the run, this model of robot needs to be emptied, and all the pet hair removed from the rollers.

It is here that you may find that it ran over something wet.  Not a big deal, just some extra cleaning is required and then make sure everything is dry before re-use.  The filter will normally stop any liquid from damaging anything in the robot.  If the filter is wet, it will need to be replaced.  So far for me, I have not needed to replace a filter for that reason.

It is best to do the emptying besides a tall kitchen trash can.  It is best to take the lid off so that you can make sure that the dust from the robot goes into the bag instead of around it.

The single caster is removed from it mount, and should not be taken off if its axel.  Sometimes it is easier to pull the caster mount from the robot and then remove the caster.  If you do take it off the axel, you can put it back together, and still use it, but the axel will always fall off each time you go to clean it.  Pet hair will collect on the axel, sometimes more than others.

Each roller is supposed to come apart into two pieces, when they get worn they may come apart in three pieces as the brass bearing may come out of the grey end.  The pet hair needs to be removed from both ends, from inside where the grey cap comes on, and from the body.  You will notice when it is a shedding season, or when another pet is visiting, as there will be more hair.
If the brass bearing comes out, just put it back in.  While the grey end caps normally latch, as the part wears out, they may stop latching.  As long as you can put the roller back together, it will still work, and the roller assembly will keep it from falling apart.

Look for pet hair in the drive tires, usually there is not any, but if there is, then try to remove it as much as possible.

The triple sweeping brush needs to have any pet hair removed.  During shedding season you may have to use a screw driver to remove it for easier cleaning.

Then remove the dust collection box and empty it into the trash.  After emptying it, remove the filter and holding the dirty side filter down toward the trash bag in one hand and the collection box with the filter opening also down, gently tap the two of them together to get some more dust out, and hopefully extend the life of the filter.  After that there will be some loose dust in the collection box to be shaken into the trash.

Before putting it back together, the robot body is then checked for pet hair especially where the rollers feed into the dust collector.  That should be removed.  Then the robot body is shaken into trash to get anything that did not make it into the dust collector.

If the body gets too dirty, just spray a glass cleaner product on a paper towel and then use that to clean it.  I would not spray anything directly into an electronic device.

The collection box with the filter removed can also be hand washed and rinsed, but you will need it to fully dry before putting it back in the reboot.

After the robot is reassembled, it can be put on its charger for the next run.

Self Servicing

The consumable parts can be ordered from iRobot or their authorized resellers.  Sometimes you can get a better deal from the authorized resellers.  I am not sure that it is worth using the third party rollers even though they are a lot cheaper than the actual ones.

This robot is setup for easy servicing.  All you need are #1 and #2 Philips head screw drivers. 

Most of the other parts can be ordered directly from iRobot.  While there are third party clones for most of the parts, surprisingly when I have checked they were priced higher than iRobot sells them for.

Two parts that I did have to get from third parties are a replacement caster, and replacement tire treads.

I got the caster as a spare, when the axel came loose from idler wheel, but so far have not used it.

Except for occasional glitches where the robot stopped responding, all the repair issues have been with the main floor robot, the one that we have had the longest and have made the most mistakes with.

For the glitches where the robot stops responding, that has happened only two or three times.  The first time where the robot was not charging was fixed by briefly unplugging the charging base.  That was the only time I have called iRobot support, and I moved the charging base to a new outlet so everything would be in the room where I called them.  I plugged the charging base back in just as a representative answered the phone, and the robot immediately indicated it was starting a normal charging cycle.
The robot/charging base sends telemetry into the cloud, and from what the technician could see everything was now good.  So since then, if the robot stops responding to commands, I now take bottom cover off, unplug the battery 

And one day I noticed the downstairs robot was not moving as well as it should, and discovered that the tire treads were gone from both tires.  No idea what happened to them, as I have not found a trace.

I had pet hair get into one of the drive wheels, and I could not get it all out.  More just kept getting in and it was pushing the wheel off of its axel and causing the wheel to rub against the robot case.  Finally I was able to pry the robot wheel off the axel and get the dog hair out and put it back together.   But with in a few months of that, the wheel stripped it self off the drive axel, and I had to replace the entire wheel assembly.  I think around that time the robot may have tried to ingest some ribbon that was being used as a cat toy, and that also got tangled into the drive wheel, but I am not sure of that.

And then recently the socket for turning the dark green roller also got stripped out so that roller stopped turning.  So I had to replace that assembly.  It came with two new drive rollers.