The Ocean Swipe 360 Junior is a freshly announced new glass-cleaning device for home aquariums from the makers of the Ocean Swipe 360. The original Ocean Swipe 360 glass cleaner is an all out glass cleaning robot with more features and built-in electronics than you can shake a stick at, including touch screen controller and even acrylic-polishing abilities.
Like the Ocean Swipe 360, the Junior edition can clean all sides of the tank, and even turn corners through the use of a specially laid track riding the top and bottom edge of the aquarium. The OS360 Junior uses micro-stepper motors to move itself along said track for whisper quiet operation, although so far we have not yet had the chance to use the words ‘stepper motor’ and ‘silent operation’ in the same sentence, so we’re curious to see how well this claim holds up.
As the primary unit of the OS360 Junior moves along the track, a slider with an attached magnet moves up and down the glass, essentially performing the robotic equivalent of cleaning the aquarium glass with an algae magnet. The OS360 Junior has been made to be much more affordable and suitable for smaller tanks, by doing away with the built-in touchscreen and handing off the controls to USB or wifi.
The new smaller Ocean Swipe can handle glass thicknesses between 1/4 and 5/8th of an inch thick (6-16mm), and it’s been preprogrammed for basic operation out of the box. The announcement of the OS360 Junior is completely new so we’re still anxious to learn more about when this new glass cleaning robot will become available, and how much it will cost.
If the Ocean Swipe 360 is everything but the kitchen sink, the OS360 Junior is a much more pragmatic approach to developing a product that may actually be affordable, and actually practical to bring to market considering the first Ocean Swipe 360 only exists in a couple prototype concept devices. [Ocean Swipe]
