this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
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Roomba. It got better in ways that made it worse. Really just want to put it in a room and let it wander around and vacuum. It doesn't need to map the house and then get confused if a door is closed. It doesn't need to tell me the filter is old. The old ones you could just put them wherever and close a door or put a box in the way to keep it corralled where you want it.
Better and smarter are two different things. Sometimes they intersect, other times they don't.
The new ones can do what you want too though. Just press the "clean" button on the roomba twice. Or the "clean everywhere" option in the app, if you've set it up.
In both cases, it goes wherever it can and returns to the starting point.
IMO both features mentioned sound good, but they shouldn't be a showstopper if they don't work as intended. Can you jailbreak a roomba?
I don't know. It's interesting tech, but just not useful. I don't need to start it from my phone when away from the house, and it loses its maps and makes new ones that don't have the whole house if it encounters closed doors; if you then put it into the room it forgot and start it, it just sits there confused. It gets confused when furniture moves too. We have to close doors a lot to keep dogs separated, teens close their doors all the time, my house is not static enough for this detailed mapping function. I tried giving it zones but even then the closed doors break the maps.
There are things I like about the app. Getting the details on what an error message means, finding it more easily when it's hiding. But overall losing the ability to just set it down anywhere and let it run without mapping was a bigger loss than what was gained.
Gee, now that's just crappy work. It should be able to add (or remove) a "wall" without assuming away the rest of the house.
Overdesigning is one thing. Missing obvious functionality while doing it is quite another.