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Roomba Vacuum Robot Opens to Hackers

Posted by Zonk on from the do-do-do-dooo dept.

FleaPlus writes "iRobot has quietly released the specifications (pdf) for the Roomba Serial Control Interface. Using a serial port one can now tinker with the Roomba by controlling behaviors, programming new songs, and remotely monitoring sensors. Hopefully this will allow for some clever hacks."

4 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. They actually built these things? by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Wow.. heard about it on slashdot last year and thought it was just a late april fools joke.

    Do they work? It seems to me that unless your house is completely square and tidy with nothing on the floor it's going to suck ..errr.. blow... err.. whatever. The average geek house is a bit of a maze of cables and other stuff as well, plus narrow corridors full of boxes etc. Not to mention the problem of closed doors (can this thing open doors or is it expecting star-trek style automatic ones?).

    1. Re:They actually built these things? by djupedal · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yes, they actually built those things.

      And they work great - be prepared to buy one for each family member that sees it in action.

      'The average geek house' ...is not exactly the 'average' target demographic. The manufacturer assumes a modicum of upbringing, that includes such routine habits as flushing the toilet more than once a day, not creating fire hazards by casual cable placement and knowing the fine art of routine household management.

      Roombas really are quite well thought out - knows when to go back and recharge...dozens of sensors help it learn...maps each room after one pass, etc. Very cool to watch in action, and a real treat to come home from work to a clean floor.

    2. Re:They actually built these things? by MacJedi · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Judging from my brief inspection of the SCI specifications, you can not get access to any of the Roomba's on-board memory or reprogram any of it's logic, but you can give it commands and read the state of the sensors-- so it should be possible to give the roomba mapping capability, provided that the logic was all external.

      Something like a gumstix device would be an ideal platform-- it has linux, it has serial, and potentially wifi / bluetooth. You could even power the thing off of the roomba battery.

      --
      2^5
  2. they actually have one at my base by spacerodent · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I work for the Navy and they have one of these in a meeting room. They just let the little bastard run around free range 24/7 and the room is packed with chairs. There is a strict no touchy rule in effect as well so people will just deliberatly put their foot rigth in front of it only to watch the poor roobra bounce off. As if that wasn't funny enough try listening to a speech from someone important as a tiny robot putters around smacking into things. Highly amusing.