The Ultimate FPV Cleans House

February 3, 2017 by Adam Fabio 8 Comments

With much of the world in the doldrums of the winter, hackers are getting a bit stir crazy. [Notamed Closed] would much rather be outside flying his First Person View (FPV) quadcopters. Sure there are indoor drones, but [Notamed] wanted to keep grounded. He grabbed his R/C equipment, his Roomba, and of course an Arduino to build the ultimate FPV experience.

There aren’t many details on this build, but it’s not too hard to deduce what [Notamed] has done. He’s using a standard R/C transmitter and receiver. Instead of driving servos, the receiver plugs into an Arduino Uno. The Uno translates the PPM R/C signals to serial commands. Most Roomba’s include a serial port made especially for hackers. [Notamed] simply sends the proper iRobot Serial Command Interface (SCI) messages, and the robot is his to control.

The FPV side of things is a bog standard FPV camera and transmitter, sending standard definition video to his goggles. A GoPro is along for the ride to capture high-quality video.

Sure this is a quick hacked together build. All the parts are taped on to the Roomba. We’re sure this is on purpose. When the weather warms up, the R/C equipment goes back in the air, and the Roomba becomes just another vacuuming robot – once again a danger to pet messes everywhere.

Check out the video after the break.

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Racing Roomba Packs The Power To Pop Wheelies

September 2, 2016 by Dan Maloney 12 Comments

This is just good, clean fun. Well, maybe not clean since this souped-up racing Roomba appears to move too fast to actually clean anything anymore. But did they ever really clean very well in the first place?

[Roland Saekow] doesn’t offer much in the way of build details, but the starting point was a 10-year old Roomba Discovery. The stock motors were replaced with 600RPM planetary drive motors and a whopping 12A motor controller. The whole thing is powered off the standard Roomba 14.4V battery pack, but we suspect not for long. Those motors have got to suck down the juice pretty fast to be able to pop wheelies and pull hole shots like it does in the video below.

No word either on how it’s being controlled; our guess is RC, since it looks like the collision sensor grazes a chair leg slightly around the 0:33 mark, but doesn’t seem to change direction. It’d be cool if it could operate autonomously, though. We wonder how it would deal with the Virtual Walls at those speeds.

File this one under “Just for Fun” and maybe think about the possibilities for your defunct Roomba. If speed-vacuuming isn’t your thing, there are plenty of other Roomba hacks around here.

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Roomba Now Able To Hunt Arnold Schwarzenegger

August 27, 2016 by Bryan Cockfield 13 Comments

Ever since the Roomba was invented, humanity has been one step closer to a Jetsons-style future with robots performing all of our tedious tasks for us. The platform is so ubiquitous and popular with the hardware hacking community that almost anything that could be put on a Roomba has been done already, with one major exception: a Roomba with heat vision. Thanks to [marcelvarallo], though, there’s now a Roomba with almost all of the capabilities of the Predator.

The Roomba isn’t just sporting an infrared camera, though. This Roomba comes fully equipped with a Raspberry Pi for wireless connectivity, audio in and out, video streaming from a webcam (and the FLiR infrared camera), and control over the motors. Everything is wired to the internal battery which allows for automatic recharging, but the impressive part of this build is that it’s all done in a non-destructive way so that the Roomba can be reverted back to a normal vacuum cleaner if the need arises.

If sweeping a just the right time the heat camera might be the key to the messy problem we discussed on Wednesday.

The only thing stopping this from hunting humans is the addition of some sort of weapons. Perhaps this sentry gun or maybe some exploding rope. And, if you don’t want your vacuum cleaner to turn into a weapon of mass destruction, maybe you could just turn yours into a DJ.

Roomba Vs Poop: Teaching Robots To Detect Pet Mess

August 24, 2016 by Adam Fabio 119 Comments

Imagine this: you come home after a day at work. As you open the door, your nose is the first alert that something is very, very wrong. Instead of the usual house smell, your nose is assaulted with the distinctive aroma that means your dog had an accident. The smell is stronger though — as if Fido brought over a few friends and they all had a party. Flipping the lights on, the true horror is revealed to you. This was a team effort, but only one dog was involved.

At some point after the dog’s deed, Roomba, your robot vacuum, took off on its scheduled daily run around the house. The plucky little robot performed its assigned duties until it found the mess. The cleaning robot then became an agent of destruction, smearing a foul smelling mess throughout the space it was assigned to clean. Technology sometimes has unintended consequences. This time, your technology has turned against you.

This scene isn’t a work of fiction. For a select few families, it has become an all too odoriferous reality just begging for a clever fix.

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Vacuum? No, Tonight We Go To War Against The Dust Mite

February 1, 2016 by James Hobson 8 Comments

For those of us lucky enough to own a Roomba, it makes taking care of dust in your house a breeze — but it could be better. Which is why [Marcel] spent his weekend upgrading his Roomba — or should we say, Doomba.

He started out with modest intentions. What’s stopping his Roomba from going a bit faster? He was pretty sure he could crank up the output a little bit. Donning his white lab coat and safety glasses, he set out do upgrade this little bot into something much more formidable.

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Hacklet 87 – Roomba Projects

December 5, 2015 by Adam Fabio 23 Comments

First introduced in 2002, The iRobot Roomba was conceived as a robotic vacuum cleaner. Just about every hacker, maker, and engineer out there immediately wanted one. The Roomba proved to be more than just a vacuum though; it was the perfect base for any household robotics project. Before long Roombas were being hacked to do way more than sweep your floor. iRobot recognized this, and added a hacker friendly serial port to later model Roombas. They even released a vacuumless version called the iRobot Create. Thousands of projects have literally ridden on the wheels of the Roomba. This week’s Hacklet is all about Roomba projects.

We start with [fuzzie360] and Poor Man’s Raspberry Pi Turtlebot. [Fuzzie360] has their Roomba running Robot Operating System (ROS). ROS actually is running on an on-board Raspberry Pi. While Willow Garage may be out of business, ROS lives on as an open source project run by Unbounded Robotics. Installing it can be a chore though. While [Fuzzie360] hasn’t given a full tutorial, they have offered to give advice if and when you get stuck.

A Raspberry Pi would be overkill for the simple suite of sensors built into the Roomba, but it’s perfect for [fuzzie3680’s] modified setup with a Microsoft Kinect. [Fuzzie360’s] goal is to have a robot that can vacuum the hostile territory of a university apartment.

Next up is [Sircut] who upgraded his Roomba’s power cell. Early Roombas were designed to use Nickle Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries. The individual cells are built into a proprietary iRobot battery pack. NiMH can’t hold a candle to Lithium Ion batteries though. Lithium Ion cells are very common these days in devices like cell phones and laptops. In fact, [Sircut] used 18650 sized laptop cells for this upgrade. [Sircut] also added the essential LiIon battery protection circuit to make sure those cells stay happy. A voltmeter provides a visual reference that the batteries aren’t becoming overcharged. An upgrade like this will likely double the Roomba’s runtime, but it does come at a cost. Roomba’s original charge dock can no longer be used as the on-board charge circuitry isn’t designed for LiIon battery charge algorithms.

Next is [Marcel Varallo] with Robot Wars for the Commuter. How does the IT department blow off steam? Fighting robots of course! Unfortunately, [Marcel’s] coworkers aren’t all programming mavens. Hopefully some programming is in the cards for them down the road. For now though, [Marcel] has created a robot fighting league using nearly stock Roomba robots. Each bot gets a set of 3 balloons and 3 pins. A balloon represents a life. Once your lives are all popped, you’re dead! [Marcel] also created an upgrade system where winning ‘bots can move on to stronger weapons like flamethrowers. During his research, [Marcel] found out that the brushes in his Roomba are powerful enough to sweep dust and debris up without the vacuum enabled. So he’s disabled the vacuums for longer ~~cleaning~~ battle times.

Finally we have [Fredrik Markström] and ESP8266 controlled Roomba. [Fredrick] is hacking an ESP8266 module to be the main computer of this little Robot. Of course, a ‘8266 means it will be carrying WiFi, so this robot needs to have a web interface. [Fredrik’s] first problem was powering the ESP8266. The Roomba’s battery runs around 15 volts, which is definitely not friendly to the 3.3 volt ESP8266. A switching DC to DC converter was in order, and [Fredrik] found the perfect candidate on eBay. The ‘8266 will control the Roomba through the serial interface included on all the current models. [Fredrik] has big plans for this ‘bot, including navigation and advanced vacuuming algorithms.

If you want to see more Roomba projects, check out our new Roomba project list! If I missed your project, don’t be shy, just drop me a message on Hackaday.io. That’s it for this week’s Hacklet. As always, see you next week. Same hack time, same hack channel, bringing you the best of Hackaday.io!

Hackaday Retro Edition: The RadioShack Roomba

June 1, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 15 Comments

A few years ago, Roombas — everyone’s favorite robotic trash can — graced the pages of Hackaday with reverence. There was nothing this little robot couldn’t do, save for going up stairs. Roomba hacks have died off since then, and these little trash cans have been swallowed up by dumpsters. It’s all very sad, really.

[Mike] has had one of these Roombas around for a while, sitting in a closet, waiting for someone to make use of it. He recently dug it out, looked it over, and watched the LEDs light up after troubleshooting a problem with the batteries. Then the problem was how to control it.

He had wanted to connect it to a VIC-20, but the handy serial port on the Roomba only accepted baud rates between 19.2k and 57.6k. The VIC-20, with the ancient 6522 VIA, could only bitbang a serial port up to 2400bps. Then the idea hit him. In his closet of ancient technology, [Mike] had a Tandy 102, a slightly upgraded TRS-80 Model 100 that could easily drive a serial port at 19.2k.

When it comes to a mobile retro robotics platform, [Mike] couldn’t have found a better computer. The Tandy 102 has a display, a BASIC interpreter, enough RAM to run a Roomba, and is powered by a few AA batteries. He did need a little bit of level conversion for the serial port, but a MAX232 took care of that easily.

With everything put together, [Mike] had a robot and a computer that is at least as good as the old Heathkit HERO robot. You can check out a video of the Tandy bot below.

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