Roomba DirtDog

We've got a Roomba Discovery, and love it. Have been considering a dirt dog for the shop space, maybe one for my small warehouse at work.

How do you think it'll do with screws and workshop detritus?

I found a BNC to RCA adapter in the bin that had rolled under the workbench along with some 3/8 inch bolts and an 8P common nail! The brushes take up the kind of stuff that nothing short of a multi-HP shopvac will retrieve. The bin's too small to suck up mounds of saw dust but it does a pretty good job of clearing wire scraps, nails, staples, screws and nuts. Unlike the brush attachments for the B&D battery powered upright, it doesn't get all bogged down on pieces of phone wire or twist'ems. They do get wrapped around the brush drum and it seems after five or six scraps of phone wire it really bogged down, but that's actually pretty good compared to other powered roller brushes I've used that gag on just one scrap of wire.

It does need cleaning almost every time but that's OK since it saves a lot of time otherwise and the small bin encourages me to dump the contents in a small tray to make sure no diamond earrings or other valuables get swept away.

I didn't get the electronic fence or the home base recharger but if it survives more than a month, I think I will. It works on carpet, too, but not anything very deep. I was astounded at how much dog hair it beat out of the living room carpet. The dogs don't know what to make of it, because if they get too close, the little rotating corner whip brush bops them on the nose. It's hysterical because after bouncing back and forth with them for a while, it will appear to take straight off after one of them. It's worth it just for the entertainment value.

It's pretty noisy but that's not a big issue. The weakest part is how it handles the corners. Ten years from now it will come mounted with a robotic vision system that will go after every last bit of dirt but for now, it will do, especially at a price under $100.

What we need now is the automatic bathroom cleaner bot that can scrub shower walls and clean toilets.

-- Bobby G.

Those are already available. They're called wives. :^)

Actually, there's this "Scrubbing bubbles" thing you hang in the shower (there are ads on TV) (~$10, refills are ~$4)

Last person to take a shower that day, pushes a button, and closes off the shower. Ten seconds later, a cleaning solution is sprayed around the shower area.

While not 100% effective, it's done a good job for me the last year or so. Best hint is to start with a clean shower, and you might need to find a better location than hanging it from the shower head. (middle of the back wall works for me)

I tried it and found it to be totally worthless.

The most effective means of maintaining a tub or shower clean is also the lowest tech method. Dry the surface after using it. We toss a towel over the top of the shower wall (it's a Roman shower). When finished bathing one simply wipes off the walls and floor. This takes about two minutes. It completely eliminates accumulated soap crud because the water doesn't evaporate in place. The shower stalls need routine cleaning about once a year and even that is quick and easy because there's nothing to scrub off.

Even more importantly, how can it be automated? When I read BF's comment about how poorly the spray had worked for him, compared to AZ's much more positive experience, I realized a lot probably has to do with soap type, shower design, shower wall materials, water mineral content, body chemistry and a lot more. It would seem the best way to automate the process *is* to rinse the scum with a detergent and mildewcide.

A little scrubbing robot would be nicer! A rail around the edges of the shower near the top could serve as the guide track for a scrubber that works vertically the way the Roomba work horizontally, but exerting enough pressure sideways to actually clean anything might be a hard thing to do. Someday, we'll have a robotic arm or two suspended from the ceiling or jutting out from the walls that will not only clean the shower, but scrub your back and whatever else needs doing. Until then, I'd seriously consider the "scrubbing bubbles" unit if it made a dent in the problem.

Anybody ever tried treating their shower walls with Rain-X? It does a remarkable job on car windshields. It would probably be pretty easy to test a small area, a few tiles square, to see if it helps. As AZ pointed out, the starting condition of the wall probably has a big effect on how well the "scrubbing bubbles work." Yet another "science project" works its way onto my geometrically expanding "to do" list . . .

-- Bobby G.

I've used clear car wax and the results are very good.

I find it necessary to spray a little Clorox in the shower every few months to keep the grout clear of mildew. Other than that, just toweling off the surfaces works well.

The biggest problem seems to be soap scum which forms a hard calculus on the tub and shower surfaces when they dry. As long as the water is picked up before it evaporates, no deposits form.

Even after a few days it's obvious that the Rain-X (which is probably pretty much the same thing as clear car wax) has kept the small section of shower wall that I test treated from getting dull. Get a DirtDog and learn how to keep scum off the shower wall as a collateral benefit. Gotta love the web!

-- Bobby G.

After a week the main problem seems to be that I have to work in concert with it, opening doors (so it can clean behind them) and moving things around. It still leaves stuff in the corners - might have to look into mods that change that behavior. Still beats vacuuming and sweeping myself, though!

The dust bin catch also tends to open at the worst times. It got stuck under the bed, I pulled it out, the dust bin came off in my hand and spewed yuck all over the side of the bed. I'll have to be more careful or add a latch mod. Would be great if it had a wireless cam and a light, but I am sure some kid at CMU had already added stereo vision!

Those brushes have to be cleaned nearly every run to keep it cleaning. Any sort of wire, cord or string had seriously bad effects, especially if it gets wrapped around the wheel axle. It managed to climb into the center of a coil of coax and drag it around until its batteries died without doing much cleaning. Otherwise, its sensors (and it's got lots of them right down to a caster painted half black/half white to easily detect rotation) keep it in check. If it lasts the month, I will buy one for the main floor, too. It really makes a difference and has VERY high SAF. Highest I've seen for a HA geek stuff in a long time!

-- Bobby G.

Some follow-up.

I've ordered two more units so I can have one on each floor and some cannibalization potential as they age. (-:

I became sold on them when I tipped over my Xerox shredder onto the carpeted floor. The DirtDevil Broomvac choked almost immediately on the pile of spilled paper strips 1/4" wide by 4" long (it's a crosscut shredder). The vacuum inlet could be cleared by jamming a clotheshanger into the inlet and wiggling it, but that turned into a very bizarre looking imitation precision drill team with me flipping the Broomvac every 30 secs or so. Then I tried a slightly larger Hoover hand vac, but the result was the same. There's very little room between the inlet and the capture tank wall, and the paper knits up a nice bird's nest very quickly.

I put the Roomba DirtDog down and confined it to the area with two kitchen chairs and by the time it took to get my camera and get back, it had sucked in nearly every shred!!! A few minutes later and it was completely done.

I have found one place where the bot gets hung up routinely. It's an Ikea floor lamp with a large metal base that has a very gradual incline. The Roomba slides up on one wheel and then tries to "hump" the lamp like a randy dog. I'm serious. We call it the "Dirt Dog Conga." (-: It starts banging against the base of the lamp while it tries to free itself and the whole lamp starts shaking, the motors start groaning and it rocks itself back and forth until it either frees itself or plays the "I've fallen and I can't get up" song.

I put some bright fluorescent duct tape on the edge where I've *repeatedly* tried to lift it by the trash bin door (oops!) and written: "DO NOT LIFT" on it. But it hasn't helped much. I once again picked it up by the trash compartment and it fell about four feet and broke the right "bump" sensor. Locating the dirt cup release right where most people tend to lift the unit is the culprit. It behaves quite differently without the bump sensor.

I found (eventually) in trying to repair it that you can modify the robot's program and instruct to spend more time in the corners. Had the sensor on the brush side failed, it would spend a lot more time brushing corners, bumping forward until some internal watchdog timer says enough is enough and the DirtDog moves on. If I do decide to reprogram it, I will make sure that it spends at least twice as much time working that rotating corner brush. So maybe the bad release design had a serendipitous component to it. I've found that two pieces of black electrical tape on the top right where the dirt cup seam is located hold tightly enough to keep the unit from coming apart when lifted by the disk, and not the handle. A bother, but a quick and dirty fix seems to have solved it.

This week, I found that the cord had come loose from the charger and the blinking green LED had flashed all that time and nearly depleted the battery. We store it face down to keep the little whip brush from deforming and so did not see that the light was on. Minor nit and might become pointless if I go with the homing charging station.

If you forget to empty the bin, it starts to back up into the machine's innards. To avoid nasty overload cleanup , you've got to check the roller brushes and the dirt cup each time although the manual says every three. It's important to do, because when the cup is full, the unit begins to really ram dirt and hair into all sorts of openings and seams. No matter what they say, it needs cleaning after every run, at least if you've got pets. Even short-haired dog hair gets matted up pretty quickly. Since JRT hair is extremely oily, it cakes up everywhere, even worse than in a regular vacuum because of the beating action of the brushes combining the oily hair and the dust.

It works best if I work with it, though, removing obstacles, moving wastebaskets, pickup up tissues, stray dog rope toys, etc. Even the dogs are in on the act. I give them treats for each lost nylabone or tennis ball they retrieve before the DirtDog stumbles on them. If I don't keep an eye on it, I often have to chase it down to see what bed or bureau or shoe it got hung up on or under.

All things considered, I'm still a happy owner because people keep asking "did you just vacuum?"

One other nit is those damn end bearing for the roller brushes. They have a very loose bayonet lock and one's already gone permanently missing. They invariably fall off the end of the roller brushes and into the twilight zone when they're being cleaned. Oh well. I'll have to contact Roomba to buy a bag of replacements because it's clear that they will come free again in the future and end up in the trash (at least I think that's where it went!). We'll see how understanding they are about repairing the bump sensor or whether *they* agree that the dirt bin release is in the wrong place!

-- Bobby G.