We're primarily an Android blog, but we also cover plenty of smart home gadgets for our readers. And today, we've got something special. Some guy on the internet (Michael Reeves over on YouTube) tweaked a Roomba to swear when it runs into things stuff shit.
Roomba's outdoor cousin, the iRobot Terra, will mow the lawn for you
Thanks to iRobot's Roomba and Braava automated cleaners, floor caring is effortless and can be initiated by telling Alexa or Google Assistant to vacuum or mop. The same privilege is coming to the outdoors with the Terra, iRobot's new autonomous lawnmower, which will make grass trimming as painstaking as speaking to a smart speaker or pressing a button.
Read MoreGet your own robot butler for as little as $150 in Best Buy's smart vacuum sale
Smart vacuums like iRobot's Roomba devices are a realization of our Jetsons-style aspirations for the future: they're mechanical servants that can clean our homes with little to no input from us. They can get up there, though, with super luxe models going for $1,000 or more — but Best Buy is running a sale where you can grab one for as low as $150.
Read MoreThe Roomba robot vacuum will soon begin mapping your house's WiFi coverage
iRobot's Roombas are already quite smart to begin with. They map out your house, figure out as best they can which areas they can reach and which areas are problematic, and the WiFi-connected models can be controlled remotely with an app or via Google Home or Alexa or IFTTT. A new capability is on their horizon: a WiFi coverage map of your house. So instead of you holding your phone with a WiFi signal detection app and walking around several times to the different nooks and crannies to figure out the weak or dead spots, Roomba will do it for you.
Read MoreNew IFTTT channels for Roomba, Somfy, Switchbot, and more
IFTTT is one of the best ways to connect your multiple smart services and appliances and make them work together. Sure, there are hubs and services that might offer to bridge the gaps between different IoT companies, but IFTTT really covers the entire gamut, and since it supports Google Assistant, that makes it easier to issue voice commands at your entire house.
Today's expansion of IFTTT brings us several new channels that can be connected to either your Google Assistant or your other devices. Here are the new channels:
- iRobot Roomba (connected vacuum): you can start, dock, pause, or stop the Roomba through IFTTT, or trigger something else when the vacuum finishes a mission.
iRobot's Roomba robot vacuum adds Clean Map reports and promises Alexa integration
I've been eying the iRobot Roombas for over a year now. The idea of a robot vacuum gliding around my apartment and cleaning up while I'm not around sounds all too appealing and nerdy. And because I'm into connected gadgets, I sure want one of the newer Series 900 robots, which would set me back somewhere between 7 and 9 Franklins. Ouch. If you're lucky enough to have that kind of dough to spend on a Roomba, your robot is about to get cooler in the geekiest kind of way: maps and stats. Oh and Alexa.
iRobot is announcing new Clean Map reports for your Roomba 900 series that will show you a map of your house and the spots that were cleaned, along with graphs for the total cleaning time and coverage over the last 30 jobs plus some lifetime stats.
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