Just Call Me Miles Dyson

4 years ago I purchased a refurbished iRobot Roomba 830 on a deal website. It was a pretty good deal for one of these cool little floor vacuums, so I went for it. The little droid lasted about 3 years before it stopped working. After I got married, my wife inherited this broken robot that just sat in our kitchen. Of course, it was only a matter of time before she forced me to part ways… but I convinced her to give me a shot at fixing it first! (*BTW, Miles Dyson is the fictional cybernetics scientist from Terminator, not the vacuum inventor)

I had read a bunch of articles and watched youtube videos online to conclude that this was a common problem with these little Roombas. The infrared sensor gets misaligned over time and you need to readjust it. Mind you, I have no experience with robotics. I was a computer science major my freshman year of college, but pretty much flunked out by the time I was a sophomore. Regardless, I decided to give it a shot.

I ordered the new IR sensors on Ebay, and when they arrived, borrowed a soldering gun from my dad to attach the sensors. I used this video (below) from youtube to help me with the step by step process. It took a few tries, and it was definitely intimidating to take apart a robot, but I finally fixed it! For only a few bucks, I saved a couple hundred dollar vacuum from the trash.  I felt like Miles Dyson from Terminator!