Fixing the Roomba “Circle Dance”
About a year ago our original Roomba started backing up and turning when it shouldn’t have. After a few talks with iRobot, they said they’d send out a replacement — I just had to send them the little guard on the bottom, apparently that’s the thing they won’t sell except with the Roomba.
They sent out a Discovery SE (we had just a regular discovery before). There didn’t seem to be a big difference between the models except that the SE was grey instead of white. After using it for a while, it seemed like the SE got stuck more often, but I’m not positive about that.
Then recently the new Roomba started backing up when it shouldn’t, like it was up against a cliff or something, which is similar to what the old one was doing.
So, having some time on a Saturday between babysitting servers, I thought I’d take the first one apart and see if I could do anything about whatever was broken. I just started taking screws out and would search for things on the net as I thought of keywords to use in an attempt to find any kind of guide.
I eventually came across a site that told me how to take apart my roomba, and I went along with their stuff. It was *really* dirty in there, did my best to clean it all out, and after putting it all back together, our original Roomba is working great!
I may or may not open up the SE and do the same stuff with it, but we’re just happy to have a working robot in the house again!
