Slashdot Mirror
Turn Your Roomba Into a Household Google Bot
Wael Chatila writes "By adding an on-board computer and a camera on a Roomba, the Roomba can be used to index your home. As a bonus, you can also control the Roomba across an internet connection, and see the images from the camera — a spybot for you to check on your own home while you are out."
Everytime I hear about these I can't help but think of Moya's DRD's...
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I suspect that you give the GGP too much credit.
Gee thanks. Check out the mother's initials if you think I accidentally stumbled onto that satire.
Why do I even waste my time on this site?
My work here is dung.
>For half that price, you're better off with Rovio [wowwee.com].
I bought one and was very displeased with it. The camera on it is of poor quality (requires a very well lit room) and the little white LED it uses as a headlamp is almost useless. I toughed it out for a while but the audio over the internet just would break more often than it would work. Annoyingly there's no "press here to speak" button, it just picked up sound from your mic at whatever threshold, so you were usually broadcasting and sending static when it did work. The amount of bandwidth used was pretty high for just audio. Oh, audio was IE only.
The battery life on it wasnt too great either. I loved watching it dock, though. I ended up returning it. Perhaps the Rovio II will be better especially if they opened it up so I could get root easily. Perhaps even a basic serial or usb port for use by tinkerers so we can mount devices its not designed to use. There's a need out there for a good little telepresence robot at around that price point that is expandable and hackable. The Rovio is just a toy. The Blackfin at half the price would be perfect.