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Roomba + Wii remote + Perl = Awesome
Anonymous Wii Lov'n Coward writes "Check out the WiiRoomba, a mashup using a Wii remote, a perl script, and the Darwiin Remote software. While a little sluggish to respond, the Roomba is entirely controlled by the Wii remote accelerometers." All of the source code to do it yourself is available at the site linked, along with a youtube video of how it works.
For those interested, the WiiLi.org Wiki is full of Wiimote examples using Python, just takes a handfull lines of code to get started with the Wiimote, its really easy.
Fun ones
No offense, but Java would be a particularly bad choice for this application. The real work done here is "gluing" two things together at a system level - the Roomba program and the Wii program. Java is uniquely miserable at interacting on the system level. Where Java excels is object-oriented architectural design and huge enterprise-level programs.
So, if you want a scalable application server, use Java. If you need to tie two programs together, use a scripting language like Python or Perl. If you know you can limit yourself to a Unix shell environment, Perl may be best (and this is from a Python junkie!)
My roomba discovery came with a remote, and I swear the only reasons my sisters come over any more is to "clean" using the roomba w/ the remote. It's useful for the occasional shutdown when it's too loud, but other than that, you can't even issue the park command with the remote - and there's no reverse!
The sensor bar is kind of confusingly named. The bar itself doesn't actually sense anything. It just has 2 ir emitters, the same type in your average tv remote. The wiimote picks up the signals from the emitters to find out where it is in relation to your TV. People have reportedly been successful in substituting 2 candles for the "sensor" bar. The bar does plug into the nintendo, but since the wire simple provides power, some minor hackery will allow you to plug it into an ordinary wall socket.
Actually, "mashup" originates in the multimedia industry as well. Look it up on wiki. My earliest MP3 "mashups" date back to 2002. They were more commonly called "vs" tracks before that.
"Mashup (music), a musical genre of songs that consist entirely of parts of other songs"
Generally, a software mashup (like the music mashups) are just a composite of other pieces with as little new logic as possible. Taking the output from one program and using it as input for another, when the two were not specifically meant to interact is the canonical example.
Overlaying rental locations on a google map, for example. The rental database already existed and functioned, the google maps already existed and functioned. All that the mashup did was took the locations of the rentals and put them on the map, with perhaps only a dozen lines of code.
It goes crazy in every house. That's how it works. It's essentially random (yes, it does have some heuristics, but it doesn't measure your place and then calculate a path to vacuum everything), but eventually, it'll have vacuum'd every space simply because it keeps on going and going.