I have one of the older rhumbas. It does have the ability for wifi access, but I’ve never understood fully why someone would hook it up to wifi. I live in a very small house, less than 1100 sq ft. I can traverse one end of my house to the other in a matter of seconds. I walk over to the rhumba, push the clean button, and off it goes ridding my floors of dog hair. Works great. What other options would wifi open up? The ability to start and stop it? I wonder sometimes if people just never really think about what or why they are giving wifi access to. It’s kind of like an AI Rice Cooker. It seems very unnecessary to me, but it seems like a selling point to others. ‘Oh a wifi enabled, AI Rice Cooker! This is gonna cook the fuck out of some rice’, and away they go. Not realizing we’ve been making excellent rice without wifi or AI for millennia. I mean, I sit and watch my sushi chef masterfully make rice with basic kitchen pots and pans.

Now, I’m no Luddite, and I really dig on technology. Been this way since I was a kid thumbing through Pop Sci mags and later on Byte Magazine. I can’t get enough. However, I also realize that all technology wields a double edged sword. So, it’s always a research project when I add some electronic gizmo. Can it run autonomously? Why does it need wifi? What advantages does this gizmo give that a conventional tool can’t perform? Sometimes there’s a trade off, but most times there is no reason to give wifi access, and if I do, it’s isolated, like my Traeger Timberline. It comes with a remote and wifi access, so it get’s isolated from the rest of the appliances. It is not essential to it’s operation, but when I’m smoking big butts overnight, I can adjust temps from the comfort of my bed. So, there’s the trade off. You give it wifi access, isolate it, lock it down, and Jack’s a doughnut, Bob’s your uncle.