Hi everyone. I’ve got a Roomba 540 which was doing great service in my basement, until the basement flooded that is.
I took the power supply apart (model 17062) and it is obviously toast. Quite a few components are burnt or even totally gone. The base station contacts are a bit corroded but the station itself may be salvageable if there’s nothing too complex electronically inside there. The Roomba itself doesn’t look too bad. Water seems to have got into the dust and debris collection thingy but when I pulled the battery there is no evidence of corrosion or arcing around the battery connectors.
So - my question is: is it worth just buying a new power supply ($24 on this site) and seeing if the robot will charge and get going again or should I just consign the robot to the garbage can?
I have exactly the same problem with my Roomba. I got the battery out and tried to dry it up with hair drier. too bad the battery was dead. I found a battery from a friend but it was already dead . Now I’m considering getting a new one because I liked it.
Thank you very much for the offer. I’ll have that in mind. In fact my friend whom I took the battery from gave me his Roomba since he wanted to buy a new one. I’ll still be looking for a battery though but I have something in mind. My friend said he can find me a used battery from a broken one.
Sorry to hear about your basement. Hopefully you’ll still be able to salvage your Roomba. You’ve removed the battery already; that’s very good. First thing you should ever do if the robot gets wet. Second, you really want to let the robot air out in a dry place to get any lingering moisture out of the Roomba. Compressed air may help.
If the battery was in the robot and it was on the charger when your basement flooded, there may still be some charge in the battery left. After drying the Roomba out sufficiently (and if you want some tips on opening up your Roomba to dry it out further, we suggest you check out the Ultimate Roomba Resource Center - it has many repair guides that will show you how to open the Roomba up), you may want to look at putting the battery back in to see how the Roomba runs. If it turns on, try to put it through a cleaning cycle and see how it behaves. If you get any kind of error codes, these may give you an idea of which components are defective and need replacing.
If your battery is dead, the other thing you could do is buy a charger, and try it out on your Roomba. The home base, when connected to a power supply, outputs 2.9VDC approximately at its docking terminals. If you don’t get that, the base may be defective also. But, with the new power supply, you can plug it directly in to the Roomba and charge it, and see if the Roomba works or not. If ever it looks like it’s going to cost you more than you want to spend to repair the Roomba, you always have a 10 day refund period for things bought with RobotShop, so you just need to contact us via our Support Center to get an RMA to return the charger. At that point you’d only have paid the shipping to send it to you, and the shipping to send it back. So you have to weigh the costs of risking approximately 20-30$ in shipping versus potentially having to buy a new Roomba if you throw yours out.
Please let us know if you have any questions. Also let us know what you find out.
If you’re looking to replace your Roomba, you do always have the trade-in option where you can get 40$ for trading in your old Roomba and apply this as a credit to a new order. You can find details about the trade-in program here; it actually applies to any Discovery and/or 500 series Roombas. Also see the different Roomba models we offer here.
Hi all! Just joined and I see that this is an old conversation. I have a Roomba 589 that couple of years ago my wife left it go across our dogs wee wee pads in our old apartment. I tried drying it out, took the battery out and wound up buying a new one but I still have the dead roomba and parts from an older one that the sensor died in.
Last night I took the water damaged unit apart, cleaned all of the components with electronics cleaner, didn’t find any corrosion on the roomba anywhere. I put the battery from my current roomba into the unit and got nothing. When I put the battery back into my newer unit it made the tones that let you know the battery was inserted. I even went as far as swapping out the wheels, vacuum bin and spinning brush. Still nothing. Is it worth replacing the motherboard? I see new ones on ebay going for $50-$70. Is there anything else I can try before I make the leap?
Since the robot was in contact with water, we believe that the best way to proceed is to send it to a specialized repair center.
If you have bought the robot with RobotShop, contact us via our support center so we can verify your warranty.
. Now I’m considering getting a new one because I liked it.