4 Easy Mods for your Navibot 8845/55/95

[robocleaner]

These are not exactly all "mods" as such, but things I've done to improve the frustratingly poor performance of my Navibot SR8855 and help make it slightly easier to live with.

1. Making it suck

If you look at your Navibot's dust bin, you've probably noticed how the frame of that filter half-blocks the suction channel. How Samsung didn't notice that themselves at the design stage we'll probably never know, but with a sharp hobby knife you can easily cut out the obstructing part of the frame to open it up (careful you don't cut into the filter itself - a thin lick of glue along that edge will ensure it's sealed). It certainly improves the suck on my 8855 - not brilliantly, but to some degree. Cleaning used/dirty filters in an ultrasonic cleaner improves the suck quite a bit too.

Standard filter in the bin, modified filter being held.

Modified filter in the bin, standard filter being held.

2. Making the battery run longer

Samsung warrant the Navibot battery for 6 months, and recommend replacing it after a year. There's nothing inherently wrong with the quality of the battery in my opinion just that the Navibot treats it very badly, and my 18-month old battery was down to a best run-time of just 26 minutes. Cycling it slowly 5-times improved that to a consistent run-time of 67 minutes - as good as a new one.

Cycle the battery to improve run-time.

3. Straigtening out the curled-up side-brushes

No way am I buying new side brushes when there's nothing wrong with the old ones, other than they twizzle themselves up so tightly the Navibot starts jumping up and down like a nodding donkey. Piece of wood, 4 screws, leave them overnight, and they're as good as new by morning.

Straighten out those curled-up side brushes!

4. Virtual Wall/Lighthouse AA rechargable battery conversion

D batteries? They're kidding, right? Who still uses D batteries in this century? Do shops even sell them anymore? Well, not in my house... anything that needs batteries in my house will use rechargable AA or AAA cells. End of. The trouble is D batteries give 1.5 volts each, yet AA rechargables only give 1.2 volts, so you'll need 3 rechargable AA cells to make it work... and work brilliantly it does too. 3 AA cell battery holder and a clip easily available from Maplins or Radio Shack, it fits in the device perfectly, and with 2000mAh or better rechargable cells lasts just as long as typical D cells. I find "Hybrid" rechargable cells seem to work best since they retain peak charge much longer than normal rechargable cells.

Virtual Wall runs on 3xAA rechargable cells. Duracell Hybrids being used here.

[Fraggboy]

Excellent mods. Thank you for sharing them with the rest of us.

[piokrza]

Nice mods!

[NusNus]

Really nice tips! Especially how you straighted out the brushes.

How often is it needed to do a complete cleaning of the robot? I´ve had mine for a week and it´s allready really dusty and full of my dogs hair .

[piokrza]

NusNus - the more often the better but I noticed that you own premium Navibot - model SR8980. In case of that, it should be no more often as once a week, or so, maybe a month?

Ps. the side brushes can be easily straightened out by putting them in hot water cup for a few minutes - works perfect!

[NusNus]

NusNus - the more often the better but I noticed that you own premium Navibot - model SR8980. In case of that, it should be no more often as once a week, or so, maybe a month?

Ps. the side brushes can be easily straightened out by putting them in hot water cup for a few minutes - works perfect!

Ok thanks . Once a week should be enough allthough it looks really dirty all the time

[piokrza]

It's a vacuum cleaner, so it "must" be dirty but I think that if you put it to work more often, then the dust amount will decrease.

[iMayne]

I hope everyone sees this. Great!

I see you have a great battery charger



A must have to keep your battery going.

[robocleaner]

A must have to keep your battery going.

Oh yes! Of course, the real irony here is that a charger/discharger such as this iMax one costs a lot less than a single replacement battery pack, and this iMax has saved/extended the life of several of my battery packs over the years saving me many hundreds of bucks/pounds/euros!!!

The only issue I have with this particular iMax model is that it's discharge rate is somewhat limited on larger packs... to about 0.4 amps; it'd be nice to discharge at a rate similar to that of the appliance. But it's an acceptable handicap given the very modest price.