If you're a user of iRobot Roomba vacuum robot with self empty Clean Base, you've probably heard about this problem or even experienced it yourself. Because some absolute moron of an engineer designed dust port with weak thin plastic lever that is constantly under heavy stress because of the spring pushing against it when you close the Clean Base lid as well as when it's already closed. Mine broke off when lid was closed because of that stress and it caused port to slide out of the dust bag (without me knowing) and several empty cycles of dust bypassed the dust bag and went straight into the motor port as well as suction sensor tube. It took me 6 hours of disassembly with help of super useful Adams Reviews disassembly guide (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGfmymPnCgg) because of stupid engineering. On top of that, entire Clean Base is screwed together from bottom to top. To reach the dust port/lever compartment I had to take apart ENTIRE Clean Base dock. It could be a thing of 3-5 screws from the top where no one could see them anyway inside the dust bag compartment. Instead I had to unscrew, I kid you not, over 50 screws, carefully take apart the circuitry and all the connections from the bottom through entire dock. Absolutely absurd and idiotic. I've never seen such intentional anti-repair design in my life just so it looks like it has no screws anywhere. Absolutely insane.

LINK TO 3D MODEL TO FIX THE BROKEN CLEAN BASE DUST BAG LEVER:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7046362

More details, instructions and image material available in the link. I hope this will help you guys resurrect your Clean Base dock with a 1 gram piece of plastic that costs almost nothing to print. Again, shame on you iRobot for using worlds worst engineered design of this lever as well as entire dock.

I have a Roomba j9+ and it has been stuck in a software update state for a week. It will not vacuum in this state. Is there any way to recover from this?

I've seen FAQs and troubleshooting pages that say clean the contacts with alcohol, and that works, but I seriously have to do that every time I run it. The only other thing that will work is jamming something under the Roomba to lean it onto the charging contacts. Is it a crappy base? Are there any diy tricks to give the base better contact?

Day 1 of running my roomba, and I already had to clean the brushes because all the hair decided to accumluate at specifically the axis of the brushes. Is this just something inevitable with the design? I have a roomba j8+.

Although the original IRobot Roomba was the first commercially successful robot vacuum, it was not the first commercially available. The Electrolux Trilobite was released one year earlier in 2001, and while it was more advanced than the Roomba, the Roombas much lower price allowed it to win out.

The IRobot Roomba S9 is the oddest Roomba ever produced. It is the only IRobot model with a D shape instead of the circular shape every other Roomba has been. Unfortunately due to the odd shape, this model has a lot of parts only for the S9 itself, meaning that despite it only being one generation discontinued, it has the worst support of any of their robots parts wise (IRobot has already said they have stopped producing certain parts for it like wheel modules).

Despite the original IRobot Roomba releasing in 2002, the robot did not contain any hardware for self docking until 2004, with the release of the Roomba 4000/discovery series. The dock worked by shooting 2 ir beans in 2 different directions, allowing it to guide the roomba between them right to the base where it's charging pads make contact with the pins on the dock. Despite this design being almost 20 years old, modern Roomba docks work in almost the exact same way!

Since this place is completely dead, I'm gonna start posting daily Roomba facts until someone comes along and needs troubleshooting or something. Until then, enjoy all of the facts you would ever need to know about Roombas.