Roomba robot vacuum cleaners are great at cleaning floors, but they also love to talk. Roomba will often start talking and beeping when there are issues.
There are many Roomba error codes, so your Roomba could be constantly talking and beeping if it has many issues. But sometimes these error messages are annoying, especially if you’re sleeping at night.
If you don’t want them to chat away, you’ll need to silence them. How do you do that?
This article will cover how to silence Roomba and how to stop Roomba from talking.
Can You Silence Roomba?
Unfortunately, the Roomba’s voice can’t be turned off because iRobot doesn’t have an on/off switch to disable the speakers.
Many people will complain that the Roomba wakes them up in the middle of the night if the Roomba gets stuck while cleaning or something like the Wi-Fi stops working. No good night’s sleep for them.
Robot vacuum cleaners like the Roomba are not as noisy as upright vacuum cleaners, but they will still make noise.
You should turn the Roomba off when you go to sleep. If you want to get rid of the annoying voice of the robot, you need to shut down the machine before going to bed.
A good schedule is to run the Roomba during the day when you’re at work, so you can come home to a clean house. Then turn off the Roomba at night, so it won’t bother you when you’re asleep.
The only way to stop the Roomba from talking is to remove its speakers. But opening up the Roomba and taking the speaker out will void your warranty, so it’s best to be very careful if you do attempt to disassemble the Roomba.
How to Silence Roomba
Here are the steps to disassemble and remove the speaker to silence a Roomba vacuum.
1. Remove the Dustbin and Brushes
The first step to get to the speakers is to remove the Roomba dustbin, main roller brushes, and the side brush.
Turn off the Roomba before doing anything. This will prevent the robot from accidentally running.
The Roomba uses standard Philips screws that you can remove using a Phillips head screwdriver.
2. Remove the Bottom Plate
Next is to remove the bottom plate of the Roomba that holds the Roomba vacuum cleaner together. You need to remove the 4 screws before you can take out the bottom part.
Don’t lose the screws though when you unscrew the bottom plate. Put them in a safe place.
I like to get a white piece of paper, and putting the screws and other small parts on it. The white makes for a nice contrast that makes the parts easy to find.
You can also put the screws in different sections of the paper. Write down the location of the screws or parts as a reminder of where they go when you need to reassemble.
3. Remove the Battery Pack
Remove the batteries by grabbing the two green plastic tabs on each end of the battery pack.
4. Remove the Bumper Plate
Bumper plates have 10 small screws to remove. You need to use a small Phillips screwdriver to get these screws out. Then you pull the arc plate off with the screw holes.
Remember to keep the screws on the paper too.
5. Remove the Sensor
Push the bumper plate away from the rest of your Roomba to get to the sensor for removal.
Be careful when you’re removing the sensor. You could tear the cable, which will be very painful to fix later.
Take off the two screws holding the sensor in place, then remove it carefully. Don’t lose the tiny piece of plastic inside the sensor. That plastic helps the Roomba work well.
You should be able to take out the bumper now without damaging anything else. Put the bumper somewhere safe.
6. Remove the Cover Plate
Slowly flip the Roomba back over so it’s right-side up. Be careful here as the bottom plate was already removed and you don’t want to damage anything on the bottom.
Carefully pull off the top cover plate. You should hear clicking from the snaps if it’s done right.
A flat-head screwdriver can be used to help get the cover plate off.
7. Remove the Top Cover
There are 10 Philips screws on the top cover holding it down. Take the screws and the top cover off.
8. Locate and Disconnect the Speaker
Now it’s time to look for the Roomba’s speaker and disconnect it to stop the Roomba from talking.
You don’t need to take out the speaker to stop the robot from speaking. Instead, you should disconnect it from the motherboard.
The speaker is located on the bottom left side of the Roomba, and it has the same type of wire as the sensor from step 5 above
Disconnect Roomba’s speaker by carefully pulling the plastic piece of the cabe out. Don’t pull too hard as it might tear the wire.
When you disconnect the speaker, the Roomba won’t make anymore sounds.
9. Put the Roomba Back Together
Following the steps backwards, you can reassemble the Roomba and put it back together.
This is where putting the screws and small parts on a piece of paper would be good.You’ll have things labeled and easy to find.
Here’s a good video of how to fully disassemble a Roomba i Series robot vacuum. This will offer a good visual of the various parts to take apart to get to the Roomba’s speaker.
Silencing a Roomba Final Thoughts
All in all, this should take less than 20-30 minutes to do. Until iRobot figures out how to silence the Roomba or at least allow customers to silence them, disconnecting the speaker will be the only way to stop the Roomba from talking.
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