Ever find yourself with nineteen nameless robot vacuums lying around? No? Well, [Aaron Christophel] likes to live a different life, filled with zebra print robots (translated). After tearing a couple down, only ten vacuums remain — casualties are to be expected. Through their sacrifice, he found a STM32F101VBT6 processor acting as the brains for the survivors. Coincidentally, there’s a project called STM32duino designed to get those processors working with the Arduino IDE we either love or hate. [Aaron Christophel] quickly added a variant board through the project and buckled down.
Of course, he simply had to get BLINK up and running, using the back-light of the LCD screen on top of the robots. From there, the STM32 processors gave him a whole 80 GPIO pins to play with. With a considerable amount of tinkering, he had every sensor, motor, and light under his control. Considering how each of them came with a remote control, several infra-red sensors, and wheels, [Aaron Christophel] now has a small robotic fleet at his beck and call. His workshop must be immaculate by now. Maybe he’ll add a way for the vacuums to communicate with each other next. One robot gets the job done, but a whole team gets the job done in style, especially with a zebra print cleaner at the forefront.
If you want to see more of his work, he has quite a few videos on his website demonstrating the before and after of the project — just make sure to bring a translator. He even has a handy pinout for those looking to replicate his work. If you want to dive right in to STM32 programming, we have a nice article on how to get it up and debugged. Otherwise, enjoy [Aaron Christophel]’s demonstration of the eight infra-red range sensors and the custom firmware running them.
Just to clarify that among the cores for STM32 he used the one made by STM (based on HAL) instead of the other one, named today STM32duino (yes, the same user name of the STM one) based on the LibMaple core.
Here is another video of them:
https://youtu.be/SxPpuwdMD3M
Strap knives to them and you can have a surprisingly clean arena of death!
https://youtu.be/OwtxWL0P9wA?t=155
now now, we both know this can get out of hand quickly…
http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/374/776/7f5.jpg
LOL!
I had some rumbas as well. But we use blue tooth adaptors and our phones to control them.
“[Aaron Christophel] now has a small robotic fleet at his beck and call. ”
s/robotic fleet/evil robotic minion army/
FTFY!
B^)
They are round, like the daleks, they cannot go up or down stairs, like the daleks.
Did I say too much for my safety?
EX-TER-MIN-ATE!
They’re not Roombas, which is a relief because iRobot supplies the Open Interface Spec that allows a great deal of control (even uploading new tunes) via UART: https://www.irobot.com/~/media/MainSite/PDFs/About/STEM/Create/create_2_Open_Interface_Spec.pdf
Though you do need an adapter for the unusual connector: https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/ubHbfBHT
STM32duino community on facebook
https://www.facebook.com/STM32duino/
and https://www.facebook.com/groups/401974703595955/
is there any source code or more detail instruction?