Episode: 2205
Title: HPR2205: Quick Tips Roomba and silicone Packets
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2205/hpr2205.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 15:43:30

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This in HBR episode 2,205 entitled Quick Tip Rumour and Silicone Packets.
It is hosted by Opera Nero R and in about 7 minutes long and can in the next visit flag.
The summary is Quick Tip Rumour Cleaning and Silicone Packet Reo.
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Okay, this is another quick tool, quick fix, part of my going to be my quick series for
AgriPublic Radio.
If you can contribute, something anything, just record something you find a value that
you're doing and make a quick podcast about it.
Today, I was at a town where my wife was complaining about the Roomba being giving your issues.
We have two of them.
One's the newer hotness and the old classic or an older classic second or third gen.
In short, what you want to do is kind of use a blower to clean it out.
If you don't have a blower, you can use a can of air, of course.
So do your basics, your obvious things.
These next two things are basically a standard, at least across my two Roombas that we have
here.
There's a little spinny thing on the right side of the Roomba that you can sweep under
stuff.
It's like a little try screw thing.
You can basically, it's used to sweep around corners and things like that.
These little brushes get messed up a little bit.
What you can do is actually apply a little bit of heat to them.
Maybe take an air, a dry air and an air heat gun, or if you have a tear dryer, you might
be able to get these to straighten out.
Mine are pretty straight on this one.
I haven't had to mess with them that much.
Of course, you can buy replacement little, sweetie things.
So what you want to do is unscrew it, pull it up, verify that there's no hair up in
there or anything like that.
If you want to, you can get something called silicone spray or silicone spray.
Silicone spray is pretty much safe to use on any plastics from what I understand.
What you'll do is you'll spray a little bit in there just to get it wet and then maybe wipe
off the excess drip because you don't want a whole lot of wetness in any kind of vacuum
thing or anything that's going to process a lot of dust and dirt.
You don't want it to be wet, right?
So you want to get a little bit in there, maybe just to give it some slick moves so it can
slide a little bit easier across the surface of the little churny thing.
So that's the part of the little sweeper, more or less, that sits on the corner.
It's like a dry sweeper.
The next most important thing, which in the case of when I was at a town, crapped out,
there is a roller in the front that is black and white halves.
Now, from what I can gather, I've not looked this up.
This is actually a component to detect whether or not it's moving, essentially, right?
So when I take this out, there's actually pieces of cat scratching post inside of here.
Excuse me for the blowing.
So under this little ball, it's a sensor that I'm assuming detects white and dark or detects
one or the other.
So that way it knows it's moving.
What happens is it gets stuck, and the only way it knows that it's stuck is that this
ball is not rolling.
So if the ball is not rolling in normal operation, the thing is going to think that it's stuck
in constantly and just go and blah, blah, blah, blah.
So you want to clean this out.
So you pop it out with a screwdriver or whatever you want.
It kind of sits in there.
It's made to easily be maintained.
Well, what you can do is you can pull the hair right off of the roller for this front wheel.
And start with that background noise there.
And you pull this pin out for the center pin.
You can actually pull it out and where your gunk and stuff is, which my wife didn't clean
out, is inside of this rod.
So there's this axle that goes on this wheel.
And then inside of the axle is a space.
And for whatever reason, this is where all the dirt and grime get all stuck up in here.
And that's usually what makes it stop for me, at least, is this axle space in the axle
gets filled with dust and dirt and grime and won't spin around a little bit.
And then blow through the center, both through the center of the wheel.
And then if you want to spray a little bit of that silicone spray in there and then
get it set it back in there, you're pretty much good to do.
I'll blow it out.
I'll blow the sensors out.
I'll make sure the springs seem accurate.
The newer one that's newer model, this is the, I don't know, with dirt detect.
It's got a schedule and a clock on it, which is kind of pointless.
The newer one is, seems to get stuck more than our whatever.
This is the 65, the one I'm working on right now.
So it seems to get stuck more than the other one we have.
Now the older one we have, which is white, it's white, and like one of the second generation,
something like that.
That one, the problem we had is for whatever reason, it, I think it got, that wheel got stuck
and then it thought it was stuck for like an hour and then burned out one of the motors
on the left or right main motor.
So that's what can happen if you don't clean your Rumba.
It's going to get confused and it's going to be stuck in this forever ending loop and
burn out some motor or some apparatus in the process of that.
So anyways, that's a quick little bit here and it's probably going to be a part of the
series of little quick ones for Hacker Public Radio.
And if you can contribute, like I said, get a mic out, record it, headset, whatever,
and even if you want to do a video, you can just make a little bit verbose, but contribute
and have fun.
This is just another quick tip.
You can actually take leftover silicone, just silicone dry packets, bust them open, make
sure that they're not like the charcoal activated ones, but make sure that they're clear or
kind of all as clear looking ones.
You can take those, set them aside and actually cook them.
I think at 125 or 225, err on the side of lower, you're just drawing them out right.
So it's essentially you're kind of putting them in a toaster almost.
So I'll put them in the toaster oven on a bit cookie sheet with aluminum foil.
Though actually I think melt if you get them too hot.
So you want to, I think it's 125, you can look online.
So you let them bake in there for like 45 minutes and then just kind of check on them and
roll them around a little bit.
I'll let them sit in there, like get them nice and dry.
Let them cool, let them cool for a bit.
And then I stick them in a plastic bag and mark it clean.
So when I'm doing my, my jerky, then I'll have some nice clean stuff to keep the dry.
And then that's one of the tips, quick tip.
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