Almost!

I've been talking about this for a few years now. About how I'd buy a robot cleaner when it can crawl out of the pool and park and charge itself. This is soooooo close.

It’s only $1400 - you should try it and report back 🤣
 
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I do like that there are home & start buttons on the dock itself so you aren’t beholden to wifi/bluetooth/app connectivity which often present the most issues.
 
Only one small drawback. How does it empty the basket? Still need to do that.
Yes, I think that was probably in my previous rantings. My Roomba wanders my house, or will clean only the areas I "command" it to. It then returns to it's charging station, and empties its tiny bin into a much large bin attached to the charging station. I only empty that one a few times a year. The technology exists, it's just a matter of applying it to pool cleaners.

I expect that's the "easy-ish" part for manufacturers. The much more challenging part is finding a market for it. How many people are going to buy a $1400+ pool cleaner? And how many of those would buy another one when the first only only lasts a few years?

People with that kind of money to burn don't have pool robots, they have pool boys.
 
It’s only $1400 - you should try it and report back
Great idea! I ordered one for you. Look for it on your porch in a couple days. Hope you don't mind, I used your charge card number. Looking forward to your report! ;)

You do this one, I'll do the one that crawls all the way out of the pool and empties its own bin. Deal?
 
Great idea! I ordered one for you. Look for it on your porch in a couple days. Hope you don't mind, I used your charge card number. Looking forward to your report! ;)

You do this one, I'll do the one that crawls all the way out of the pool and empties its own bin. Deal?
Remember C.O.D. ? 🤣 that was fun while it lasted!
 
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Remember C.O.D. ? 🤣 that was fun while it lasted!
Not really. But back then I wasn't on the internet every day ordering yet another gizmo I didn't need!

Humorous Cartoon Grandpa on Bench With Phone, 10 Surprised Elderly Man in  Plaid, Digital Art PNG Download - Etsy
 
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You wonder why the pool robot vacuum industry is 15 years behind the land robot vacuums. Ridiculously sad.
Many aspects of the pool industry are so. The Pentair IntelliBrite® 5G Color LED for example. It's got banks of red, blue and green LEDs inside, which means its capable of producing millions of colors. But you only get five. And with a little extra RAM, it should be capable of remembering any number of customizable light shows, but nope, you only get seven of those (predetermined, and only a couple are worth using, IMO).

But that's not the best part, and probably why you only get so few options: to access the five colors or seven "shows," you have to turn the light on and off some number of times. No kidding. on-off-on-off-on: red, on-off-on-off-on-off-on-off-on: green, on-off-on-off-on-off-on-off-on-off-on-off-on-off-on-off-on-off-on-off-on-off-on-off-on-off-on-off-on: tropical show. What?!?

Now, to be fair, the light can be controlled by one of Pentair's pool automation controllers. But if you want the tropical show, the controller has to jump through the same hoops, and you can hear it clicking its relay: on-off-on-off-on-off...

There are lots of examples of this stone-age "tech" in the industry. The big three equipment manufacturers don't push each other, and tend to stick with what works. So there's little innovation, or rather, the innovation there is is glacially slow.

I suppose the silver lining is that the equipment doesn't plague us every few days with notices, demanding that we update the various components. So there's that.

mad.jpg
 
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