Roomba Died

[barry1602]

Hi all

I have a Roomba 560 which just seems to have died!!

It was sitting switched off and not charging or anything - literally just sitting in my lounge - when it emitted a weird sound, I went to check on it and switched it on, it lit up so I pressed the clean button. It made some more weird noises like a drowned cat then jerked forward a few times before dying.
It now does nothing, doesn't light up or make a sound. I tried a different battery in it but this made no difference.

Has anybody come across this before? Any ideas what's wrong with it?

[TechGuy]

It was sitting switched off and not charging or anything - literally just sitting in my lounge

How long your Roomba was switched off and not charging?
Roomba powers the IR subsystem even it is turned off. Over a long period of time, your Roomba will drain your battery to death.

Is there any chance that water get onto/into your Roomba while sitting there?

[barry1602]

The Roomba was sat not charging for three days. I tried another battery that was fully charged(I have a 530 upstairs) and it still didn't come to life.

It has not gotten water inside - I have no kids or pets to spill it in there - I opened it up to check for a burn on the main board but couldn't see anything.

[victor560]

what do you suppose robot heaven looks like?

I would make sure the prongs to the battery are not broken.

after that .... I'd trace the battery power to the cpu.
if that chip is getting power, I'd replace the main board

the vreg could cause that kind of problem
( I know it has got to have one somewhere....)

victor560

[barry1602]

Ok so I took the top off and starting checking stuff with a multi meter and it just suddenly came back to life. It now seems to be working ok again so I guess I will see how it goes!!!

Thanks all for the help anyway - I will re-post if it fails again.

[barry1602]

Just a little update to this thread from while ago.

This Roomba was working intermittently, It would basically work fine for a few days and then would either just switch off whilst charging, shudder around whilst cleaning before coming to a stop and switching itself off and then wouldnt turn back on for a few days, or most commonly it would seem to be fine on the charging station but when you pressed clean it would make all th eusual sounds and movements but at half speed (beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep...........etc) and would eventually just shut off.

After lots of messing and testing and using a lot of google searches I found that the piezo crystal was at fault (small silver canister on the main board with 2 legs). Being an auto electrician I am pretty good with a soldering iron so replaced the offending article with another one from a burnt out 530 pcb and hey presto!

The Roomba has been working fine for severall months with no issues at all.

I thought I would share this info just in case somebody else is out there with the same problem. I know I could have just bought a new pcb but they are around £50 on eBay whereas a new crystal would have been about £3.

[TechGuy]

Thanks for the update.

[Gordon]

Good work, barry1602. I think you are the second 5XX-series owner that tracked Roomba's fault to a defunct MCU clcok crystal. Good of you to take time to provide the update.

FYI, several other 5XX owners have reported troubleshooting a performance fault, got inside their Roomba to study its main_PCA, hunting for burned components, were fooled into thinking the clock-crystal had gotten cooked -- just because the spot-bond dope that iRobot uses to secure the xtal housing to the PCB is dark brown and appears to be burned!

[mfortuna]

I wonder if roomba's bumping into things as part of normal operation is damaging the crystal in rare cases.

My company does vibration and temperature testing on products and I don't recall any crystal failures. The testing, known as HALT (highly accelerated life testing) vibrates and cooks/freezes products to find their breaking points. If a product fails too close to operational specs the HALT results may result in product revisions.

I am sure Irobot does the same type of testing but it will be on a limited number of units.