The Ultimate FPV Cleans House

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 …read more

Continue reading The Ultimate FPV Cleans House

The Ultimate FPV Cleans House

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 …read more

Continue reading The Ultimate FPV Cleans House

Racing Roomba Packs the Power to Pop Wheelies

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 …read more

Continue reading Racing Roomba Packs the Power to Pop Wheelies

Roomba Now Able to Hunt Arnold Schwarzenegger

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 …read more

Continue reading Roomba Now Able to Hunt Arnold Schwarzenegger

Roomba vs Poop: Teaching Robots to Detect Pet Mess

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 …read more

Continue reading Roomba vs Poop: Teaching Robots to Detect Pet Mess