Summary of Hacked roomba and arduino snowballs into a Eurobot 2013 entry
This article details a 4-month school project where children aged 6 to 9 built a robot using a hacked Roomba vacuum cleaner for the Eurobot contest, achieving 19th place at the European finals. The team utilized Arduino boards controlled by Wii Nunchuks via an RJ45 connection to manage movement and servos. The build required minimal soldering, focusing on repurposing existing hardware like Meccano pieces and generic nunchuks to create a kid-friendly, wire-controlled robot within competition dimensions.
Parts used in the Hacked Roomba Robot:
- 2 generic nunchuks
- 1 Roomba vacuum cleaner
- 2 Arduino boards
- 2 sensor shields
- 6 servos
- Meccano Junior sets
- 2 female RJ45 connectors
- Hot glue gun
- Mini-DIN cables (old Macintosh serial interface)
- RJ45 ethernet cable
- Breadboards
It all started as a weekend project with my kids and soon enough I got sucked into a 4 month project with their school !
The idea was to get a small group of kids aged 6 to 9 to participate to a robotics contest (http://www.eurobot.org/eng/index.php).
It was a fun journey and they did really well as they went all the way to the European finals (and ranked 19th) with their hacked vacuum cleaner.
I delivered to the team a set of bricks I am going to detail in this instructable.
Each brick is fairly simple to build and requires no soldering.
I have:
– a nunchuk controlled arduino that drives the roomba.
– a nunchuk controlled arduino which in turn controls up to 6 servos.
– servos integrated into ‘meccano’ pieces for kid-friendly use.
So nothing incredibly new here, just bolting existing stuff together… I tripped over enough difficulties that I thought it would be worthwhile summing everything up here…
Step 2: Mobile base : arduino controlled roomba
This part is in theory made easy by iRobot (the company that builds Roomba) as they have added a serial interface to their Roomba and documented the protocol.
Now, it is just impossible to find a male connector for this interface. There are so many minidin out there ! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-DIN_connector
So, here is the secret that’s going to make this whole instructable worthwhile: the connector is the same as the old Macintosh serial interface one. I have got a bunch of those cables at a used computer parts store for 1 euro each !
5 pins are of interest:
– 2 power pins for your arduino (I plugged them right into the arduino vin pin)
– 1 pin that allows to ‘wake up’ the Roomba
– 2 pins for serial communication (Rx,TX)
I just cut the apple cable and soldered 5 headers so I could plug said cable into a breadboard and the rest of the project would not need any more soldering.
We added a big kill switch (as it was mandatory for the contest) on the +Vcc cable as close as possible to the battery.
We also had to cut the body of the Roomba quite a bit to fit the Contest dimensions (100cm in perimeter), to the point that the untrained eye would not suspect our base is a Roomba !
We were able to disconnect the control panel of the Roomba and most sensors but not the 4 IR sensors in the bumper. Without said sensors, the Roomba is just a fancy brick.
Step 3: Connect a nunchuk over RJ45
A lot a examples of how to connect a nunchuk to an arduino using a WiiChuck adapter out there (Basically 2 pins for power and 2 pins for communication).
WiiChuck adapters work fine at first glance but they just eventually fry your nunchuk. I learned it the hard way and decided to do something about it as I threw away the fourth, and last, dead nunchuk of the household…
Nunchuk are i2c devices and they require 3.3v (not 5v). This means you can not use the analog pins to power your nunchuk, you have to use the 3.3v pin. I got away with not adapting the voltage of the 2 communication pins.
I bought some ‘no-brand’ nunchuks at 5$ a piece instead of the official ones at $20+ a piece. 1 in 5 was DOA, still an ok deal though and they work fine.
I could not get the classic nunchuk library for arduino to work properly and I found a much straight forward one that I customized a little.
The contest was open to wire-controlled robots. Kids in our team had 2 nunchuks in hand connected to a breadboard. Said breadboard has a female RJ45 socket so it is connected to the breadboard that lives on the roomba through a standard RJ45 ethernet cable.
So we have 8 wires between the control box and the robot:
– gnd
– vcc (3.3v)
– pin1 white nunchuk
– pin2 white nunchuk
– pin1 black nunchuk
– pin2 black nunchuk
– push button A
– push button B
The white nunchuk is connected to the arduino board which is connected to the serial port of the Roomba.
The black nunchuk is connected to the arduino board which controls the servomotors. More on this later.
The code is pretty self-explanatory I think.
Collect parts !
For this project I used:
– 2 x ‘generic’ nunchuck
– 1 roomba vacuum cleaner
– 2 x arduino
– 2 x sensor shield
– 6 x servos
– meccano ‘junior’ sets (aka erector in the US ?)
– 2 x female rj45 connector
– a hot glue gun.
References:
http://hackingroomba.com/2006/11/28/new-roomba-prototyping-cable-for-arduino/
http://www.netfluvia.org/layer8/?p=127
http://hackingroomba.com/projects/
For more detail: Hacked roomba and arduino snowballs into a Eurobot 2013 entry
- How can I connect an Arduino to a Roomba without a specific male connector?
You can use old Macintosh serial interface Mini-DIN cables found at used computer parts stores as they share the same pinout. - What voltage is required to power a Wii Nunchuk safely?
Nunchuks are i2c devices that require 3.3v; you must use the 3.3v pin on the Arduino rather than the 5v analog pins. - Why did standard WiiChuck adapters fail in this project?
Standard adapters eventually fry the nunchuk because they do not properly handle the voltage requirements for the device. - How many wires are needed between the control box and the robot?
The setup uses 8 wires including ground, 3.3v power, four lines for two nunchuks, and two push buttons. - Can I use generic or cheap nunchuks instead of official ones?
Yes, no-brand nunchuks cost around $5 each and work fine, though one in five may be dead on arrival. - Which sensors on the Roomba must remain connected for operation?
The four IR sensors in the bumper must remain connected; disconnecting them turns the Roomba into just a brick. - Is soldering required for the main components of this project?
No, the design requires no soldering for the final assembly after cutting headers onto the Apple cable. - How was the Roomba modified to meet contest dimensions?
The body of the Roomba was cut significantly to fit the 100cm perimeter requirement while hiding the modifications.
