The great thing about hacking on Roombas is that iRobot used quality parts to build them. [Jason] got his hands on a broken 5XX series Roomba and posted an article about how he reused the salvaged parts.
What you see above is one of the results of his work. This little bot takes commands from an IR television remote control. But he also used the setup to make a self-balancing bot. The two motors from the Roomba have magnetic rotary encoders with 8-bit resolution. Pair this with a well-tuned PID algorithm and you’re in business. The video below shows him testing a motor with his PID code.
You don’t get very much info on the guts of the donor robot. If that’s what you’re looking for you need to look at [Dino’s] Roomba 4000 teardown.
since you’re lucky to have a working roomba work for more than a year i’m surprised that there arn’t more people using there parts. I used them when basic stamps were cool.
I never had good luck with the encoders in Roomba wheels – or at least the way the Create platform keeps track of them. Tell a Create to drive in a square and in a dozen iterations it has spiraled off and is trying to drive through a wall on the far side of the room… I think it misses or skips pulses; I assume (hope) that’s an error with the Create and not the wheel itself.
Sorry, unrelated;
how do you find using the OWON digital scope?
I have heard good things about them.
Would you recommend one over an old Tektronix?
iRobot uses quality parts? Tell that to my, not one but, 2 dead Roombas. They both not able to charge their battery. And it is not the fault of their battery.
fo the first time
I am currently hacking a roomba 4000 and am curious of the voltage rating on the primary drive motors. Any Ideas as to how many volts these little motor run on?
12v is what they want
I’ve gotten my hands on a roomba 4000 and am hacking away on it. I’m just curious? does any one know the voltage rating on the primary drive motors? I’m thinking 12 vdc
The create runs with a pack voltage from ~20-15v so I think 12v for the motors is a good guess.
I have a 4100 that works except battery. Will sell to interested hacker. I’m probably never going to get the project going.
Can you repair a Roomba that is just smashing into thing?