It now has wireless access:
http://www.irobot.com/for-the-home/vacuum-cleaning/roomba.aspx
New Roomba 980 Vacuum
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But for $800 I will stick with my 595 from Costco and the Thinking Cleaner upgrade. I am sure the price will come down over time. I like the mapping capabilities, but I honestly don’t care how many times the Roomba cleans the same spot. I just let it go when I am gone from the house and it does the job.
Shut up and take my money!!!
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I’m not too familiar with typical Roomba operation, but would it be possible for this one to integrate w/ ST and to know when everyone is gone so it can start working then?
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I don’t know if we have enough information on this newest model to know if it would communicate with ST.
Here is the thread that is discussing the Thinking Cleaner integration with ST.
I can’t seem to find if there is a published API for the 980.
Like you and others, I would like it to automatically run while gone. I also need it to turn off away alarm motion sensors which trip for me now.
Since the vSLAM navigation includes a camera, I wonder if this will be accessible also.
I saw the 980 announcement too… it’s far too early to tell if this will integrate with ST with a could-to-cloud connection. I sent Roomba a note about it. It seems like it’d be trivial for them to open a basic API.
But that price… wow… @milkman55 it’s not $800… it’s $899. And I’d need two of them to clean my two-story house. I think I’ll keep trolling craigslist for an 870.
My wife always tells me I drop the last two digits off anything I want to buy and then round up for anything she wants 
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Thinking Cleaner for Roomba 700/800 series on Kickstarter
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Nice, but I just saw the reviews on the Roomba 900 series and the verdict from CNET reviews is to wait, since other robots clean more effectively and for less money. I like the 900 series, but it still cannot do what this Thinking Cleaner can do. Let’s hope that Roomba will purchase this company and incorporate it into the 1000 series.
Sadly, it didn’t make it. 
They think the 900 series killed it.
@milkman55, can you confirm that the 595 from Costco works with Thinking Cleaner? It should but there is some weird answers apparently from the company on the Amazon page saying that it’s 100% compatible with the Costco 595 AND that won’t dock? WTF? I can’t see how both of those statements could be true and wondered if it was a language translation issue as TC is make in Europe. I’d love to hear your experiences.
Depending on the price of the Thinking Cleaner, I doubt the 980 would have killed it, the 980 model number seems to also represent the cost in $ nowadays, I just picked up two 870’s for $408 (including tax) each, it’s a far cry from the $900 (plus tax) for the 980.
It looks like Thinking Cleaner were going to switch to a metal stamped plate in the hope to drop production costs, I hope they do, I’m in the market for two now, I wish they’d also do something with the Scooba 450, it seems to have a serial port as well…
That makes sense to me but I honestly don’t know one way or the other. I was just repeating the basics of the message that they left on the failed Kickstarter product page. They hoped it would do better given the number of people on their mailing list with 700/800s. But they didn’t make their goal and don’t have any savings left to bring it out themselves. Sad.
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I bought the 960 over the holidays. The cleaning power is much better than my old 595.
How can the 960 communicate with ST or Alexa? I just downloaded the Roomba app, but it appears stand alone, not linkable?
Open API for the 980? Are you sure? If so can you help us find it because so far there’s no API out there. Your message is kinda misleading so please correct it if that was a mistake. 