Dobby Ingested a USB Cable

Dobby, my pet iRobot Roomba i3+ ingested a short micro-USB cable.

I was actually in the room when it happened.

Dobby almost certainly picked up the USB cable on a straight vacuuming pass across the area I named “Breakfast Bar” in the iRobot “app”. You can see a red X where the USB cable usually lives. Dobby had to have made a linear pass to where the green “x” and thought bubble mark where he stopped.

The odd female voice that iRobot (wrongly) thought was appropriate for a robot vacuum told me something after Dobby came to a stop. That’s the big problem with verbal messages like iRobot uses: you only hear them once unless they loop.

After I pulled the micro-USB cable out of Dobby’s maw, and placed him carefully right-way-up on the floor, I was informed that I should “push clean” to return Dobby to his rounds.

I took this picture because at the time, I could not see the word CLEAN under the universal on/off symbol. The lighting was poor, and who labels an on/off button CLEAN!? Just another iRobot human factors screwup.

I think I told Dobby to go home via “The App”, but all he did was wander the living room for a while, then give up without getting any closer to his charging pad.