“Say hello to my little friend”

I’ve been wanting to get a robotic vacuum cleaner for a while now. This has not so much to do with reasons of practicality, but more to do with my inner-child finding it a super cool toy.

Anywho, I found a decent model for cheap from a local electronics surplus shop last week and went for it. I’ve run it four times since purchasing it. Not a bad little cleaner – it does in fact do quite a decent job at picking up dust off of my hardwood floors.

That said, unless you pick up your socks/cables off of the ground, the little bugger might get something all tangled up in its wheels. The unit I got comes with two “virtual walls”, a small contraption that tells your Roomba not to go into a certain spot. I set one up by my computer cables, so that it doesn’t accidentally get tangled and tear my monitors off of my desk. The other is by my washroom entrance.

Is it worth it? Hard to say. For now, I’m still treating it as a toy more than anything.