Roomba Battery Issue: Won’t hold a charge / Charges and Discharges quickly
I have a few Roombas that I purchased from Woot. They may or may not be refurbished, I don’t recall. After years of excellent floor-cleaning service, I had a Roomba battery issue today.
My Roomba Discovery would go from dead to fully charged in about 3 minutes. It would then only run for a few minutes before dying. When I again charged the dead-Roomba battery, it would again show fully charged (steady green light) after only about 3 minutes… only to go dead again after 30 seconds of use.
I thought my battery was dead and needed to be replaced. The thing is, I just replaced this Roomba’s battery (at a cost of $60) about a year ago. Something seemed wrong.
I Googled a bit and found some advice that saved me from having to buy another battery. Turns out I just needed to reset my Roomba’s charging system.
“If your Roomba Red, Roomba (sage), Roomba Discovery, or Roomba Discovery SE is indicating a full charge, but it only runs for 15 minutes when you press clean, you need to reset the charging system. You can do this by removing the battery from the robot and unplugging the charger from the wall and robot. Please hold the power button down for 30 seconds. You then should charge the robot…..”
Yes, that’s right – hold the power button down for 30 seconds with the battery out and Roomba charger disconnected. What you are doing is draining the capacitor circuits within Roomba, essentially reseting it. If done with the battery or charger connected, these capacitors are never drained.
After doing this, twice, my Roomba is back to normal. That’s right – I had to do it twice to get results.
June 2nd, 2011 at 9:46 am
I have done this more times than I can count. my roomba is less than a year old. Still won’t hold the charge even though I followed this advice.
June 23rd, 2011 at 7:35 pm
I am on my second reset, I hope this works because this little machine was expensive and I am mad it only lasted about a year.
August 16th, 2011 at 12:04 pm
I am in the process of trying this myself, online i found a site that said to do this, and then let it charge for 3 days straight after draining the battery again….I hope i drained the capacitors enough, cuz i only held the power button for 10 seconds or so, one site said only 5 seconds, one says 30?
Apparently the less you use it the worse it is, so once it is charged one has to use their roomba more often than not. I’m hoping the dogs will chase it around and get some excercise LOL
November 13th, 2011 at 2:25 pm
It worked for me and I am so glad! Thanks!
December 16th, 2011 at 6:29 am
I tried resetting and using another battery but it didn’t fix the problem. I did get it to work though and here’s how. Much like a car battery if the terminals get “gunked” up it has to be cleaned to work. I know that there was lots of dust inside the Roomba so I took my air compressor and blew it out really well to clean out all the “gunk”. Then I put the battery back in it and turned it upside down (thinking maybe the contacts weren’t connecting properly). The next morning the light was orange but it worked without stopping and cleaned my whole upstairs without any issues at all. Try it!