On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 08:27:05PM +0000, Pete Turnbull via cctalk wrote: [...] > My robot vacuum has taken to asking "Please empty my dustbin and clean my > filter" about 5 minutes after I did that. More annoyingly, it insists that > "I'm stuck. Please move me so I can recover my position" about 15 seconds > after it's successfully docked with its charging station.
That's "smart" devices for you. My robot vacuum is extremely dumb and after observing it bimbling around the room, I decided that it had so few brains that it could be done with a handful of 74-series chips. Indeed the only reasons that it couldn't have been made in the 1970s is that it's powered by a high-density rechargable battery and doesn't need constant feeding with expensive lantern batteries, it has the obligatory searing-blue LED to tell me it's turned on because apparently moving around and making a racket isn't a big enough clue, and that it's not in that depressing cream and brown colour scheme which was apparently a legal requirement for "white" goods back then.
