How to Set your Roomba’s schedule
1 Open the app
You’ll have used the iRobot app to set up the Roomba in the first place, so open it up. Tap the top-left icon to select a particular Roomba (if applicable), then find the Schedule button at the bottom of the main screen. 2 Say when
You can set one automatic clean per day (though, realistically, your home won’t need vacuuming every day). Turn on the switches for the days you want the Roomba to get moving, then set the time to suit your schedule. 3 How did it do?
If your Roomba is cleaning when you’re not around, it’s worth checking its previous actions in the History menu. Tap a listing to see a map of the spots it’s hit – dark edges denote areas where it has found hard barriers.
app is another must; while automation remains a keyword, there are times you’ll want to take more manual control. The deeper you can get with this the better.
There are things you won’t have to do. Charging is a big one – everything we’ve seen in the sector is clever enough to return to its point of origin and dock itself with a charger, ready to get juiced up and go again. You’ll probably need to find a good corner for the charger, of course, and if you’re particular about your interiors that might be a big ask. You might not have to touch the app, if there’s support for a smart assistant involved – though Siri-controllable bots are few and far between at present.
Then there are things you’ll definitely have to do to make life easier for your mechanised servant. The (usually very low-capacity) dust container will need to be emptied for a start… Unless you acquire the new iRobot Roomba i7+, which is equipped with Automatic Dirt Disposal, whereby the vac empties dirt from its small bin into a bigger one attached to its dock.
Move it or lose it
In some cases, certain bits of furniture or rugs will have to be moved or removed, just so the cleaner can find its way around. In other cases, you might need to string out barriers to stop your helper flinging itself down stairs or going out of bounds; this is particularly true if your vacuum has no way to create a virtual ring fence around its operations. Some houses, with this in mind, won’t suit a robot vacuum at all. Some will require one vacuum per floor, or the effort of repositioning the charger once a week to hit all the rooms it needs to hit.
The sad truth is this: you’ll still need to do some manual labour. There will be corners a robot vacuum cannot possibly reach. There will be messes, however much muscle your robot vacuum carries, that you’ll need to tackle yourself. But for consistency, luxury, and cutting out a big chunk of that onerous cleaning routine, a robot is the perfect partner.
We’ve selected three to look at on the opposite page, representing the biggest brands in the robotic market. Keep an eye out also for a new robot from Dyson – the 360 Heurist (an update to the 360 Eye) looks set for the Chinese market initially, but we’d be surprised if it didn’t land on these shores soon enough.