[gim] gutted some li-ion laptop batteries to replace his roomba’s battery pack. He had to pick up a li-ion charger and add a protection circuit to deal with the li-ion cells, but ended up with a new lighter pack for his roomba. If you head this way, the protection circuit is a vital component to prevent fires/explisions/etc. Looks like a great resource for robot power or even R/C projects.
li-ion for your roomba
March 15, 2008 By 7 Comments
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The common way to do this, because it’s not a new thing for Roomba owners, is to use a bunch of mobile-phone power-packs. Then yo get the protection-circuit built in and can use the normal charger.
Complete kits for this is regularly sold on ebay for about half the price of a new battery.
in the roomba
the charging roomba
the lion sleeps tonight…
aweema-weh aweema-weh aweema-weh aweema-weh…
that was amazing.
This sure is great for home defense.
If someone breaks in, have your roomba follow the intruder around until the Li-ion explodes.
I say someone should find a way to make these things hunt for cockroaches or mice. Id love to see one with a taser on the end come through my living room chasing a mouse…
Ebay sells C style rechargeable batteries for rebuilding a roomba battery or any rechargable battery for that matter.
This will not change the weighting which is positioned where it is and that way by design. Incidentally this was discovered in adding a plug to the flashlight on a old 14.4 yolt Ryobi combo kit and it cleans in my basement workshop like a champ.
This setup was free for a crapped out Roomba battery … but won’t get under couches and beds.
I have replaced the internals of my Roomba battery wi LiIon without a hitch. I am using the internals from a HP DV9K laptop battery, 8 cell 6400 mAh monster. It now runs 2hrs+ :-) As long as you keep the battery safety/balancing circuit, you’re safe, it checks that no over/under voltage situations happens. My roomba charges with 1,3 Amps max, which is below that of the HP laptop would do, so the cells is cool to the touch, nothing to worry wbout. The voltages fits nice too, a fully charged NiMH pack is 12×1,4 volts = 16.8 volts, and the LiIon pack is 4×4.2 volts = 16.8 volts, so it’s a perfect match for the charger circuit!. My roomba even senses when the batteries are getting low, homing for the charging cradle again without the power dying on the way – problems other LiIon-adpoters have, since theyre safety electronics in the cells work differently. Just a single word of advice if you’re going this way – do NO at any single moment, disconnect the cells from the controller on the battery pack when re-orienting them – the smart battery controller will blow a chemical fuse on the controller, making the battery useless, unless replaced (done that, got the t-shirt etc.) Happy hacking folks.