{"id":197,"date":"2004-07-10T00:45:37","date_gmt":"2004-07-10T08:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/?p=197"},"modified":"2004-07-10T00:45:37","modified_gmt":"2004-07-10T08:45:37","slug":"new-roomba-roomba-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/2004\/07\/10\/new-roomba-roomba-discovery\/","title":{"rendered":"New Roomba &#8211; Roomba Discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As an owner of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.roombavac.com\/products\/Roomba.asp\">original Roomba<\/a>, I received a letter from iRobot informing me of a brand new Roomba line coming out &#8211; the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newroomba.com\/\">Roomba Discovery<\/a>.  The thing looks sweet.  Aside from small niceties like a battery that charges faster (3 hours vs. 12) and a larger particle bin (3 times the size), there are some larger improvements.  One of the two flagship features is &#8220;Dirt Detect&#8221; &#8211; the vacuum is able to detect that it&#8217;s cleaning extra stuff so it will slowdown and concentrate on those spots.  The second main new feature is the ability for the Roomba to realize when it&#8217;s running out of batteries, and actually return to it&#8217;s docking station and charge itself.<\/p>\n<p>When I&#8217;d first read about the &#8220;charge itself&#8221; behavior on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/B0001ZYYYM\/qid=1089420636\/sr=1-7\/ref=sr_1_7\/104-3070849-1378358\">Electrolux Trilobite<\/a>, I figured that&#8217;s why the thing cost $1800.  I apparently was wrong though, because iRobot managed to add that feature and still keep the price of the thing down to $250.  So, my current theory is that the price difference is probably navigation related.  The Trilobite uses ultrasound to map out a room, whereas the Roomba kind of &#8220;wings it&#8221; and uses some heuristic algorithms to figure out when it&#8217;s done.  One of the cool things the Electrolux does which I don&#8217;t believe the Roomba can is go back to vaccuming once it&#8217;s done charging.  From what I&#8217;ve read, the Roomba will simply go back and charge when it&#8217;s done, whereas the Trilobite will charge, then take another stab at vaccuming, and <i>then<\/i> rest.  Still&#8230; it&#8217;d be cheaper to get 3 f&#8217;n Roombas and let them loose at once than to get a single Trilobite (and you&#8217;d still save yourself a grand).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As an owner of the original Roomba, I received a letter from iRobot informing me of a brand new Roomba line coming out &#8211; the Roomba Discovery. The thing looks sweet. Aside from small niceties like a battery that charges faster (3 hours vs. 12) and a larger particle bin (3 times the size), there [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gadgets"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5TCqO-3b","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}