Cheating Roomba

The roomba came with battery powered infrared fences that can be placed to limit the area that it cleans. For the past week I’ve had one set up to keep the roomba out from under my desk because I didn’t want to rearrange the wires there to keep them out of its way. The way I placed the fence also cut it off from the balcony door.

The problem is that the fence is line of sight only. The docking station works the same way and Talore has confused the roomba by lying down in front of the docking station while the roomba was attempting to home in on it to charge. I have a couple small boxes that I close toys in for Talore to get out and the roomba occasionally pushes them around, usually just to the nearest wall. Today the roomba pushed the larger box right in front of the fence emitter, then charged my desk.

I came home to find the roomba lifted partially off the floor by some of the cables it snagged and tried to back off of. It also pulled my speakers off the back of the desk and pulled that plug out of the back of the computer. As far as I can tell nothing got damaged, but the roomba didn’t do much cleaning.