iRobot declares bankruptcy

iRobot has been behind the competition in robot vacuums for years. In March, they unveiled a reboot of their Roomba line of vacuums, manufactured by Picea Robotics. Picea is the company behind 3i, as well as contracting for other brands. In March, I felt like the new iRobot line was merely a copy of what other companies were already doing. This week, iRobot declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy where Picea will purchase the company outright. You might remember that Amazon and iRobot backed away from an acquisition after regulatory scrutiny in January 2024. I would love to see iRobot start making competitive robots again, but I am concerned this acquisition will mean they are making shovelware of other companies innovations, instead of making truly new products. We’ll see.

Matter Multi-Pack Pairing in Apple Home

iOS 26.2 and related releases are out with multi-pack Matter pairing support. This means if you get a device with a multi-pack code, you can pair all the devices in the pack to your smart home at once by scanning the special code. I have not tried this myself, but it might be useful if you’re setting up multiple new devices like smart bulbs or smart plugs.

SwitchBot AI Air Frame

This week, I made a short video about SwitchBot’s new AI art frame. The image isn’t particularly bright or color accurate, but it’s a convenient way to have a smart picture frame on your wall if you’re already into SwitchBot tech. The real story here is that SwitchBot is getting into more and more product categories. It smells like they have serious investment trying to grow the company as fast as possible. We’ll see where this all goes in the coming years. It’s exciting to watch, and I wish them all the best.

The schedule

I’m so sorry for my failed livestream on Friday. Once I realized I already had most of the pieces of Stephen Robles’ YouTube setup, I’ve been rebuilding my studio into a new setup inspired by his. I’m already finding it easier for making videos, but clearly it needed more time to be ready for a livestream. The stream on Friday started with 3 minutes of no audio, then audio started working, and my video went out. All problems appear to be fixed now, and I’ll do some more testing before our next live stream. Thank you to all the kind words from people encouraging me after this and offering testing support.

I also published a few shorts this week, and I have some more long-form videos in progress.

I hope you have a great rest of your Sunday,

Eric