The Richter Scale^®

A couple of weeks ago an early Christmas present my wife and I were giving to ourselves arrived with our latest freight shipment from the U.S. - a brand new bouncing (not in the traditional sense) baby Roomba Scheduler.

For those who have been in a cave for the last year or two, Roomba is the trade name given to a family of robotic vacuum cleaners by iRobot, the company which developed and sells the Roomba products. The Roomba products work on battery, and operate by bouncing (gently) around a room and cleaning in a pattern designed to cover most of, if not all, of a room. They purportedly work great on carpets as well as hard surfaces (we have no carpets, so I cannot attest to that part - but it’s great on the tile floors we have).

Simply said, we are very happy with our new family addition. We have two dogs, a cat, two hamsters (not free roaming though), and a native Bonairean parakeet (called a “Prikichi"), plus two children and dust laden winds, so our floors get pretty gritty in no time - you can feel it on your feet (yes, even in December we walk around on bare feet - take that snow-draped New England!).

I’ve been using the Roomba to clean a room or two a day, and what a difference that makes, especially in contrast to the more time consuming and tedious manual sweeping we had been doing before. And I can now tell my wife I really am doing my share of house work.

The Roomba is smart enough (well, equipped with enought sensor technology anyhow) to not fall down stairs, which is a big plus, and one can create “virtual walls” which the Roomba will “bounce” off of so that you can limite the area in which it should focus its cleaning skills. Plus, it goes under beds and furniture providing there’s about 3 inches or so of clearance. And one of the coolest things is that when it thinks it’s done (or when it’s battery is running low), it finds its docking station and self-parks to charge its battery.

I must say I have been remiss in not even bothering with the scheduling functions of the Roomba, but I find that it’s easy for me to pick up wastebaskets, isolate a room, and pick up floor mats and towels and then just press a button on the Roomba to tell it to clean. Actually having to program it to clean at a particular time seems wasteful when I can just start it up manually and leave the immediate area (and yes, I am a geek, but I try to be practical)

The only things so far that the Roomba seems to have had problems with have been floor towels (e.g. in the bathrooms - it chokes on them and then bleets for help), floor mats (gets stuck on them - half on, half off - and spins in circles, and concrete dust (too fine for it to pick all of it up - haven’t found a vacuum cleaner yet that does, either).

I also have one piece of furniture which the Roomba has gotten wedged under - easily remedied by putting something solid in front of the furniture that the Roomba would bounce off of.

All in all, these are minor things - I am very pleased with the unit, and I have started recommending it to friends here on Bonaire as a great way to deal with dust, dirt, and pet hair/feathers.

I give my Roomba Scheduler a healthy 8.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

(As a footnote, iRobot has also recently started shipping the Scooba - a robotic wet mop. Definitely looking forward to checking that out at some point. If it’s anywhere as good as the Roomba I’ll be happy!)