CHALLENGE ACCEPTED: ROBOT SWEEPER

Spring is here and with it are beautiful sunny clear skies and lots of light. Unfortunately, due to that light and the main floor in our house being mostly hardwood (with some linoleum), every last dust mote, eyelash, and flea turd light up like little signs starting in the late afternoon.

While we’re not disgusting people, we both hate vacuuming and sweeping. It’s a pain, hauling out the vacuum is annoying and fighting with the cords and hoses isn’t fun (not like vacuuming should be, right?)

Anyway, we were just talking about this and, as neither of us volunteered to do the rest of the sweeping and/or vacuuming forever, we started to talk about buying a little robot vacuum. My wife has a friend who has a little Roomba that’s been running pretty solid for almost a decade now, and she thinks it’s the bees knees. So we went through some of the weekly flyers and took a look because vacuums were on sale, and…

GREAT NEPTUNE’S GHOST! TELL ME THAT PRICE IS A TYPO! THAT’S GOTTA BE A TYPO…

It wasn’t a typo. Those things are EXPENSIVE. Yikes.

I’m what you’d call “cheap”, so after we discussed it some more I said, “You know, sweetie, I could just build something to do that stuff, and if it fell down the stairs or over the ledge we wouldn’t be out hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Shouldn’t be too hard, and I’m pretty sure I have everything I need here already.”

She looked at me for a second and I could tell by her slightly narrowed eyes and the set of her jaw that she was thinking pretty hard. Then she said, “Okay, you can tryyyyyyy.”

As soon as she’d replied, I was already beginning to think I’d made a serious mistake, because I’d been pretty sure she was going to say “no”. In all of my electronics hobbyist and career work, 109% of my robot attempts have been utter and complete failures (and I’m pretty sure my wife knows that). But we made a deal: I have until the end of the next vacuum sale at one of the local stores to produce a working floor cleaning robot, or we’re going to buy one.

So I’m not sure what my approach is going to be. I’m not even sure what’s out there, so a bit of research might be in order. Regardless, I’d better go find some paper and a pencil. My pride and a whole bunch of money that would be better spent on potato chips and lasagna is at stake.

I’ll do my best to update my progress here so you can laugh or shake your head at my progress (or lack thereof). Who knows – I may actually build something that works…

Alright, time to get at it!