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I recently bought a robotic vacuum cleaner; I'd vacuum normally about once a week, and it seemed that I'd need to vacuum more often, because the dust gathers ev
by ddalex 9y ago
I recently bought a robotic vacuum cleaner; I'd vacuum normally about once a week, and it seemed that I'd need to vacuum more often, because the dust gathers everywhere; having not the time or the inclination to bring out the heavy hoover, I decided to buy a robot one.
It is the best investition in the last 12 months, by far. It goes around automatically each day and keeps the floor clean. But that's not impresses me. What I'm impressed about the the level of dust that it accumulates each day. I'd expect each day to be a bit less, but no, it's about the same. So I set out to figure out where the dust comes from, as I live in a clean area of the city, surrounded by trees and greenery.
To my shock, it's us. The dust is primarily decomposed skin and clothes chafing off due to the skin friction. I can't imagine how damaging this is to our lungs, of course, nothing compared to chemicals or coal dust, but still...
I can't recommend enough to everybody to buy a robotic vacuum cleaner these days. I bought a cheap Eufy, and I can't imagine what a more expensive one would actually do more than this one.
- endgame 9y agoAfter reading about the house mapping of some robotic vacuum cleaners I'm hesitant to let one into my home.
- chaosite 9y ago... Why? What's so confidential about your floor plan?
- taneq 9y agoAh, the good ol' "if you have nothing to hide" stance.
- Washuu 9y agoMore that iRobot disclosed plans to sell the floor plans to the homes of their product users without telling them. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2017/07/25/roomba-plans-sell-maps-users-homes/508578001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2017/07/25/ro... I do not count a clause buried in a terms of service as informed consent.
- ancarda 9y agoCould you send me a detailed copy of your floor plan? Ideally, SVG? Thanks! Oh, and anything else the robot sends too, like your IP address and maybe GPS coordinates? If you're willing to send, great -- thank you. I'd love to know, for undisclosed reasons. My email is in my profile, and you can even encrypt the files you send me using PGP. Although note that I'll be putting it on my Azure account and leaving it there for eternity. If you're not willing to send me that, then please don't even try the "you've got nothing to hide" line, because you clearly do! I'm going to start challenging this every time I hear this excuse because it's demonstrably nonsense when challenged. You won't send me that SVG because you know I have no fucking business knowing what your house looks like. Neither does the robot cleaning company. The files could be kept on the device without any real loss of functionality. As Washuu posted below, they are now selling these floor plans. Should I make money off the floor plan you send me?
- JustSomeNobody 9y agoBut couldn't this all be found out in public records? Look up the neighborhood, then who built the homes. Most builders don't have more than a few dozen floor plans.
- ancarda 9y agoIn that case, why don't the companies just access those public files? Why build their own floor plans and send them back to the cloud to be sold? Why is there even a market for buying floor plans from people who didn't realize they were being mapped from their fucking vacuum cleaner. You can't even trust a vacuum cleaner. I'm really coming to despise technology companies.
- megaman22 9y agoBecause real houses almost never match the plans? This seems a little paranoid. Everybody does this kind of mapping. Call Home Depot to get an estimate for flooring, and the person they send out laser measures everything and sends you floor plans back accurate to the quarter inch.
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- GuB-42 9y agoMost robotic vacuum cleaners don't map anything at all, they just run around semi-randomly. Some of them are a little smarter and map your room internally in order to be a bit more efficient and move in more predictable patterns. And finally, there are a few expensive models that are connected and are able to upload your floor plan. If you don't want to take advantage of that feature you paid good money for, it is a simple matter of not letting the robot in your home WiFi. The first category of robots start at around $100 and do a decent job at cleaning. I don't think you really need more.
- bsbechtel 9y agoHaven't these been around for years?
- zzz95 9y agoMaybe not have carpeted rooms? They are just dust collectors.
- Abekkus 9y agoThis is a strange image. The carpets aren't a source of dust,and if designed for it, carpets could capture more dust than a wood floor, until they are vacuumed. While the dust in room with a wood floor, would continue to circulate, and perhaps more of it would reach our lungs with a wooden floor.
- owlmirror 9y agoa carpet most definitely is a source of dust. the fibers inevitable break down and become dust.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- moron4hire 9y agoDepending on how old your carpet is (10+ years), it could be the foam backing underneath disintegrating and getting sucked through the carpet. Do you have any high traffic areas that are obviously more worn than the rest of the carpet? If so, you need new carpet.
- ddalex 9y agoI have wood floors, not carpet... this being said, it's the thin wood type, not hard floorboards, not sure what's underneath...
- moron4hire 9y agoThere should be a different type of foam layer. Modern laminate flooring usually involves a layer of hard foam underneath to help deaden sound. So it could also be contributing.
- lobster_johnson 9y agoRobot vacuums are brilliant. It's worth pointing out that a big vacuum cleaner does a better job at collecting dust than a robot vacuum. One run with a high-powered wired vacuum probably collects as much as 10 runs with a robot one; you see a little dust collected every day because it's not collecting everything on every run. However, the benefit of a robot is that it runs every day. So it's less efficient in the short run, but in the long run it gets the job done. Streaming vs batch. :-)
- BeetleB 9y ago>I'd expect each day to be a bit less, but no, it's about the same. That tells me your cleaner is either not powerful enough or you need to run it more often. When I used mine (not even daily), it would be a lot initially and after a few runs would pick up less. Of course, my "less" may just be the baseline that you're seeing. As for dust, people used to say 90% of dust is dead skin cells. That claim is often disputed.