Hello Marty!
You do not need anything out of the ordinary, just space to put your charging station. In the set up, there is the adapter cable and a charging station included w/ the set up. You just connect the charging cable to the outlet, hook up the charging cable to the charging station, once you do that, you press the red switch at the bottom of the vacuum. Pick up the vacuum, and place it right in front of the charging station until the lights on the vacuum show charging.
In regards to the programming to charge, the vacuum has it automatically included, once the vacuum detects its low on battery, it will automatically go back to its charging station. Once it's charge it will continue vacuuming where it left off. I hope this helps!