In an earlier post I alluded to rumbling with a Roomba. Now I shall elaborate on the tale.

A friend bought a Roomba before Christmas with the intention of giving it to her brother as a gift. However, she bought the Roomba off ebay and didn’t really read the description in which the seller mentioned the thing had never worked quite right. So the Roomba was received and seemed somewhat functional, but he has battery charging issues that are not related to the battery.

That fiasco eventually resulted in the purchasing of a new Roomba for the brother, a new Roomba for my friend (her mother took pity on her after the hours spent trying to make the first Roomba work correctly), and my inheriting the dysfunctional Roomba.

So my experience of a functioning Roomba is rather limited. They seem pretty awesome, but they are obviously a bit temperamental. The Roomba I’m working on now is currently in pieces while I try to replace some of the components of his charger circuit. This involves me 1) learning how to solder, 2) learning how to desolder, and 3) learning how to do both without frying the heck out of the other components on the board. Fortunately, I can always get a replacement board online when I do happen to fry the other components. But until then, it’s going to be a little while until I can tell you how I feel about the little buggers.