For the "roborock" robot vacuum series, there's a modified firmware called Valetudo, which disconnects the vacuum from "cloud" and gives you local access, including the ability to manually control the movement.
If I get any problems with my S7, I will also have a look at that. But for now it works just fine. (it is also only 4 months old, so it would be a bit early to already modify it)
@@foobarturkey So why does this mater, what are they going to do with that information? It is totally useless unless they want to go to your house and mooch of your WiFi...
Hey and you can let other people drive it over the internet and then give them score based on how clean your room is and how many things they knocked down 😂😂
As a software guy I would start with hacking the firmware to make something like this work somehow. It is interesting to see how people from different disciplines have different approaches to a problem. Great video as always! ^^
Cool, you would have tried to dump the firmware, bricked it, bought another one, configured the UART correctly, dumped it, thought you understood the firmware, uploaded a modified copy, and bricked another again within an hour, at least not wasted too much time... but each method has it's own merits. The fact that most commercial firmware remains unmodifiable on the vast, vast majority of popular electronics, like robovacs and amazon alexas, despite thousands of hours trying to 'hack it' by very smart people, means as a 'software guy', you wouldn't do jack...
Well, of you're into programming, you could actually remove all of the original boards from the robot, leaving only the ESP32 inside it, but with some GPIO attached to the original sensors. Then build a remote unit in a box with another ESP32 to receive the sensor data and pass it to the main board, get the response and forward it to the onboard ESP32. That way you can programmatically choose to drive it manually (using your phone) or let the remote main board control it. That remote control unit can even be located at the charging station maybe.
Irobot makes a robot vacuum intended for educational purposes that is adaptable and able to accept code. It's changed a lot over the years, but the newest one, the Create 3 Educational Robot, may be able to help you accomplish this.
I didn’t know they still had that! Granted with 3D Printers / KiCad (aNd oUr SpOnseR PCB wAy /j) i guess self sourcing isn’t *too* bad these days. Granted having a base to go off of is always nice.
Hi Scott! There is one thing in your clips that i really love. I didn't see you talking about it, but i think it is important. Drawing while deconstructing a problem. This is something my dad tought me when he was helping me learn how to solve problems when i was in primary school. I also learned very similar method some years later. It was called a "non linear notes". Drawing simplified or symbolic shapes and relations between them, helps incredibly while searching for solution or trying to understand how things work (reverse engineering something). Maybe i have missed this episode... If not, i would ask for one describing how you approach to solving problems with drawings 🙂 I think such methods should be tought at primary school for problem solving.
I picked up one of those vacuums at a second hand store for $5. It has been sitting in a box since then because I couldn't register it with the manufacturer. Now I can use it for this project. Thank you, Scott!
I just fixed a Conga for a friend, used it few days and I'm actually thinking to buy a vaccum robot because it's working so nice!! And now your last video just appeared, THANK YOU !! I thought of modifying a used one and your video just confirmed what I had in mind. You still can put your system ON TOP of the LIDAR head unit, running your small wires over the 4 supports legs of it, it might be possible to make it really compact, even with relays... Not easy tho, indeed, but doable : )
My 8 years old Neato vacuum already had the option to manually control it through the app. I always assumed this is nothing special, but now learned this is quite a unique feature.
One of the main reasons I didn't get really into the electrical side of things is because of how frustrating it was to have a chip or component break immediately. Especially if it is a components component and the entire thing need replacement.
@@Davidslabofficial recently at work I got a 300 dollar controller and fried the interface part of it by metering out valued and accidentally touching two contacts. Of course it wasn't a part I could replace nor did I know how it worked to fix it. I think they had the buttons converted into some special serial signal. Was super dumb. And of course the entire controller needed the buttons to do anything. So the buttons not working made the entire thing useless.
I have always loved the idea of taking electronics and adding features that they don't have, through software or hardware, also i would love to see a video of you salvaging electronics from an old device and making a completely different new device from it
Some robot vacuums can actually have their software replaced with an open-source alternative; I think the open-source system was called "Valetudo" or something like that. I haven't gotten around getting one myself yet though, but I'm gonna be looking for one compatible with that.
That would be the best solution, since you'd know you're not being tracked. Particularly concerning prospect if your vacuum has a microphone and / or a camera.
As long time valetudo user I expected that it would be valetudo indeed. But I think everything looks like a nail when you are working the whole day with a hammer
First thing I thought of as you moved your robot vacuum was how it'd be a good fighting robot base - remove excess parts, add in controls & weapons & armor until it's ready for Robot Wars!
I have a Irobot robot Vacuum and it has a UART port for maintenance propose , but i hook up my pc and i can send commands to go forward, turn left, switch on the vaccum motor etc..
Great content! one thing I would emphasize though, is first checking if the pins are Input or Output first(by disconnecting the motor and testing the output), and then using a resistor to connect to the microcontroller to limit unwanted/accidental current shorts, that way everything is taken care of. Sometimes when we're not careful, and one of those pins of the motor is an output pin, and we try to drive it, it might result in bad things!
Maybe build in a curve for the acceleration and deceleration when commanding movement forward or backward. Otherwise, very cool. I'd probably make it permanent, but also able to be enabled or disabled via the control software.
I have one of those Ecovac vacuums and have taken it apart "just to see", and the amount of technology inside them is amazing! The software that runs them is great too, as all the decisions that are made, with all the different inputs from the sensors and the LIDAR, means alot of processing is going on. I would only mess around with it IF I had another one that I use and the "spare" could suffer failure. Thanks for your post! Interesting!
I would have probably opted to continue the hacking quest on a slightly older, used model that doesn’t include as much sensor tech so that your custom controller can be built up to include any sensors available for the micro controller so you can perfect the ‘better than stock’ vhacuum robot.
Great video !! If your model supports IR . You could use an IR remote to achieve that. The IR remote code available in the tasmota documentation worked for my deebot 500. Used esp8266 +tasmota to command the robot via phone to move forward, turn left or right.
this is super cool!!! rumba whatever needs to add a controller to them. kids will like to clean a lot then. we made a 1985 buick 4 door remote controlled in the 90’s. it was crazy. people would ride in it while we drove it in the field. we jumped it over some erosion bumps and killed the whole drive train.
Old Neato vacuums have a serial console that lets you do this kind of stuff without any hardware mods - you just hook up your microcontroller in the USB port and then you can control the vacuum any way you want, including XBox controller hooked to your phone.
You need a soft start to remove this over power, but, I agree that at the start is too much to add this feature ;). Only if you can mount it above the top sensors on a custom PCB which will be much smaller, might make sense though.
Could you mount the additional electronics above the LIDAR and run the wires down one of the supports to not block it? I would push forward just because those wheelies on manual mode are hilarious
The slight pitch up when the motors start reminds me of some of the robots from Robot Wars. Activate! If you added a compressed-air driven 'flipper', the bot could even tidy up for you!
I've got a really old robo vac that was powered by Lead Acid, now got it running with Lipo from recycled disposable vapes. I plan to use ESP32 cam for custom control over the internet, plenty of space inside, I will have manual/auto selectable from the webpage and video feed hosted on the ESP.
Well Scott as being a subscriber for so many years I highly arpeciate when you fail interly and show to us that is is possible even to the best ones :D of us !
Always a pleasure to see what projects you come up with. Should you run out of ideas and you have the skills, maybe you could make a bike radar? You have abilities that go far beyond us mortals, What I admire most is your ability to realize your ideas, seems like you always complete your projects.
Another great video. I really enjoyed seeing how you reverse engineered the controls for the BLDC motor. This whole video was enjoyable. Thanks for sharing.
Great video - both informative and entertaining! I won't forget frying Roomba with a single dropped screw. Through all the debugging and repairing I was disconnecting the battery... except for the final assembly 🤦♂️ I feel your pain bro!
Fascinating and enjoyable video. The 'popping a wheelie' aspect whenever you tap 'go forward' could be explored. Obviously applying full power to the drive wheels is the issue and we could experiment with various ramping of the power. I've always loved tinkering with process / motion controls and this is a 'rabbit hole' I'd end up diving down for days. lol Thanks again for another enjoyable bit of 'hacking'.
I've always wanted to do this with mine... Perhaps, if you create an extension of the robot frame and reposition the sensors, things will work out. The robot doesn't know its size, it just "reacts" to the sensors. Creating an extension of the structure and printing it on a 3d printer, you would gain space to add the components and put the project into practice. The robot would get bigger, but it would also get better or at least more fun.
That's cool! Looks like your forward function needs a speed ramp up function but otherwise that's pretty awesome. I too was wondering where you'd put all those electronics.
In old roombas UART is exposed on a top panel (under cover), and command specification is publicly available. Having some fun with it couple of years ago.
What a coincidence, I recently bought a vacuum cleaner robot. Mine hasn't the house mapping feature, but it does have the manual movement through an IR remote control. I've been thinking of a possible way to use that system to track its movement via a microcontroller, map the house, and control it with IR signals. I see it very hard to pull off, but it sounds like a fun experience
I could definitely see the fun in being able to remote control the robot yourself. However, these machines aren't cheap, and if you're getting any actual use out of it, then you have come to rely on it. If an accident means you break it and have to go without it or replace it at considerable cost, then it just isn't worth it. It's the same reason lockpicking enthusiasts always say, "Don't pick a lock that you rely on." If something goes wrong, you wouldn't want to be locked out of your house, or have to leave your house unlocked. If you find you just need to clean a small area that got missed and is noticeably dirty, your best option might just be a dust pan and broom or a stick vacuum so you can quickly and easily do it manually. :) Sometimes our interest in technology leads us to making things more complicated and time-consuming, when it should be to make things faster and easier.
Remove the light sensor to make room for the extra components and add a camera to the nose instead! RC Roomba is an awesome toy, don't abandon it now! ...but seriously good stuff as always! Maybe I'll jot RC Roomba in my future project video list 🤔
I think it's a great oversight by robot vacuum manufacturers to not include a manual control mode. Sometimes you just need to vacuum one specific spot quickly without having to haul a hand operated vacuum cleaner to that spot.
I have the Roborock S7 MaxV, you can control the vacuum robot in the app and drive it around like a remote play car. And there is a camera built in, so you can see where you're going. There is even a microphone and a speaker, so once you reach a destination, you can speak with someone around. You can even tell it to go somewhere on the map, watch it driving there with the camera and control it on the way or once it arrived. But you can not program it do do things, just a cleaning schedule
I have a Husqvarna Automower that I would LOVE to manually control. It has the uncanny ability to get stuck in the dumbest of places, and if it only reversed, it would unstick itself. Instead, I have to go out and physically pull the automower backwards, then tell it via software to resume mowing again (and then physically block the area it got stuck).
I have an idea for your next project. A small device that collects mobile phone's details (IMEI and whatever else data that can be collected) of every person that shows up in your house. This device is to protect against spontaneous intruders, perhaps drunks who broke into your house and unwisely have their mobile phone on them.
FWIW, a common solution to not having space inside is to design and 3d print (or w/e) a case extender. (i.e. extrude the outline of the division between two parts.) In this situation, it would sit between the base and the top shell. Designing it would be tricky, but the result would look like factory original and as much space inside as you could ever want.
I have a Robo Vac too, only 1000Pa, but does a Great job for me, I have wondered about fitting UV Leds to the RoboVac, to help kill any microbes / virus in the carpet, over time, this might have an effect. Possibly triggered by a vibration sensor so it switches on and off automatically. If the UV leds were in the Vac exhaust too, the UV light might similarly have a slight sterilising effect on the air in the house. If the Vac is on for 1hr, that's a lot of Air and carpet / flooring sterilised, two or three times per week.
you should check the main board for a serial UART, and see if you can hack remote control functionality into the firmware with the already existing hardware.
You actually need just the ESP 32 board. All the power electronics are on the motherboard already and are easy to identify and tap in to. I would use a PWM ramp on the drive motors to make the movement less jerky and maybe slow it down a little.
Maybe a seeeduino Xiao would fit. Also, no prototype board - just using wires. Nice projects. Would love to see a in-depth version of each, with tips and tricks.
I would Fit a Nvidia Jetson Nano + Pixhawk cube Allows for a RC Radio Receiver + RC Remote Control transmitter Gun with lots of telemetry feedback & extra buttons
Thought you were going to hack it and add it to home assistant or prevent it connecting to the internet, I did this with my roomba. Fun to watch still!
I literally did the exact same process with the BLDC vacuum motor I stole from an old roomba a few weeks ago, I wish you posted this before I spent some hours troubleshooting the motor lol
Love your channel & any knowledge you have on wireless power would be appreciated. Our research group created a wireless power transmitter that consumes 30 watts of power & has a range of over 2,000ft when a receiver coil is Earth grounded.
For supported vacuum robots I recommend Valetudo, a alternative firmware which gives you many new possibilities and also a remote for the vacuum robot.
Valetudo is amazing and I love having full local control of the robot
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Another option would be to install your electronic board on top of the lidar sensor and route your cable wires down, hopefully the lidar will just ignore the small wires. :)
My Deebot N79 (an older model from the same manufacturer) has a control function built in, is controlled used the infrared remote control included with the bot. I can not believe that the more advanced model you have do not have it.
i have an i-life a4 robot vacuum cleaner. You can control it with the remote. Not expensive on ali express. It might be nice to remove the internals and use it.
I'd have added a gamepad instead of a phone for control. Maybe a speed controller of sorts for the drive motors so you can get that fine motor control. Then again someday I'll build myself an rc lawnmower with some kind of camera so I don't burn the snot out of myself every year haha
The sensors you missed are for detecting stairs and other drops. When the IR of one LED is not picked up by the sensor besides it, the robot is about to take a dive and stops.
really nice project! I definitely would like to see a follow-up. What kind of microcontroller is used in the Deebot? Maybe one could reverse engineer the software.
I bought a MP vac like 8 years ago. No wet mopping, it had just enough space to cram a Pi Zero W into it, relays and a few other components (IR transmitter). Was able to remote control it, but it was sluggish and not super responsive (IR signals bouncing inside the shiny plastic housing I guess). Had it linked to Alexa too using an Amazon cloud service (ec2?). .... Then Amazon upgraded and it broke the voice functionality 😅
I wonder if that BLDC driver circuit uses an integrated BLDC controller IC like Allegro's A89301. Those three chips on the board may have been dual MOSFETs.
this was a really interesting and full of insights video. Really sad to hear that the wacuum cleaner got a bit hurt during the atempt of upgrade but glad it suvived and is feeling better :D. With that aside this little experiment was nice to watch. good job. now you got me thimking of a lawn mower :))
That robot is the bane of my existence 😅 ... It's great when it works, but it's so easily confused by chair legs. I often find it tangled up between some bar stools, even though it has a clear path back to the charging station 😒 In the end I prepare the house before running the robot, putting chairs on tables, removing charging cables and cat food bowls. All of that stuff that you would normally just move around when manually vacuuming. Then it updates its map constantly (nice), which means it will recognize closed doors as walls and just refuse to go in the rooms beyond. It says in the manual to keep all doors open, but (a) that's just not possible with a toddler and a cat (b) apparently "ring-shaped" room layouts aren't handled well. Scanning the house works great, but the automatic room detection is wonky and manually editing the rooms just refuses to work in the GUI (probably a me problem). Oh ... And it's noisy as hell with the scrubbing plate attached. All in all I'd still give stupid thing a 7/10 ... It's great if it works, but it often does not 🤷
OMG! I own the same darned robot (Deebot 920) and had the SAME problem with my right motor occasionally shutting down. Did you ever figure out the issue? It seems to happen when it finds too great of a load, or when its been operating for too long. I tested the motor (like you did, by applying a voltage directly) and everything seems fine. So my gut tells me that the circuit board shuts that motor down when there is too high of a draw (like when its stuck), or that whatever drives it overheats and then shuts down. Have you found the culprit? I ordered a back up motor just in case that solves the issue. Thanks for the video.
For the "roborock" robot vacuum series, there's a modified firmware called Valetudo, which disconnects the vacuum from "cloud" and gives you local access, including the ability to manually control the movement.
Good to know :-)
The roborock app also has that feature built in. Valetudo is still superior though
If I get any problems with my S7, I will also have a look at that. But for now it works just fine. (it is also only 4 months old, so it would be a bit early to already modify it)
@@mikeydk the Xiaomi uploads your Wi-Fi password to the Chinese cloud.
@@foobarturkey So why does this mater, what are they going to do with that information? It is totally useless unless they want to go to your house and mooch of your WiFi...
Now, a FPV camera for the front, and the augmented reality project that "shades" the areas where you've been.
Vacuum Simulator 2023.
Sounds like the German Dream
I really like how you think.
Hey and you can let other people drive it over the internet and then give them score based on how clean your room is and how many things they knocked down 😂😂
@@MCsCreations You scare me. Basically whatever video I watch, from whatever creators, it already has a comment from you somewhere...
@@MariomasterNSMBHD I guess we have the same preferences... The name looks to be the same anyway. 😬
(MC comes from Mario Cesar.)
As a software guy I would start with hacking the firmware to make something like this work somehow. It is interesting to see how people from different disciplines have different approaches to a problem. Great video as always! ^^
A Java developer would've to upgrade the CPU and ram, before being able to run anything... :-)
Cool, you would have tried to dump the firmware, bricked it, bought another one, configured the UART correctly, dumped it, thought you understood the firmware, uploaded a modified copy, and bricked another again within an hour, at least not wasted too much time... but each method has it's own merits.
The fact that most commercial firmware remains unmodifiable on the vast, vast majority of popular electronics, like robovacs and amazon alexas, despite thousands of hours trying to 'hack it' by very smart people, means as a 'software guy', you wouldn't do jack...
Well, of you're into programming, you could actually remove all of the original boards from the robot, leaving only the ESP32 inside it, but with some GPIO attached to the original sensors. Then build a remote unit in a box with another ESP32 to receive the sensor data and pass it to the main board, get the response and forward it to the onboard ESP32. That way you can programmatically choose to drive it manually (using your phone) or let the remote main board control it. That remote control unit can even be located at the charging station maybe.
Irobot makes a robot vacuum intended for educational purposes that is adaptable and able to accept code. It's changed a lot over the years, but the newest one, the Create 3 Educational Robot, may be able to help you accomplish this.
I didn’t know they still had that! Granted with 3D Printers / KiCad (aNd oUr SpOnseR PCB wAy /j) i guess self sourcing isn’t *too* bad these days.
Granted having a base to go off of is always nice.
Sounds like fun and a good plan. I will have a look.
Oh that would be so cool to have!
you mean the current turtlebot? that has no vaccuum in it
The non educational versions still accept python scripts! I did this to get mine into home assistant
Hi Scott!
There is one thing in your clips that i really love. I didn't see you talking about it, but i think it is important. Drawing while deconstructing a problem.
This is something my dad tought me when he was helping me learn how to solve problems when i was in primary school.
I also learned very similar method some years later. It was called a "non linear notes".
Drawing simplified or symbolic shapes and relations between them, helps incredibly while searching for solution or trying to understand how things work (reverse engineering something). Maybe i have missed this episode... If not, i would ask for one describing how you approach to solving problems with drawings 🙂
I think such methods should be tought at primary school for problem solving.
I picked up one of those vacuums at a second hand store for $5. It has been sitting in a box since then because I couldn't register it with the manufacturer. Now I can use it for this project. Thank you, Scott!
I just fixed a Conga for a friend, used it few days and I'm actually thinking to buy a vaccum robot because it's working so nice!! And now your last video just appeared, THANK YOU !!
I thought of modifying a used one and your video just confirmed what I had in mind. You still can put your system ON TOP of the LIDAR head unit, running your small wires over the 4 supports legs of it, it might be possible to make it really compact, even with relays... Not easy tho, indeed, but doable : )
My 8 years old Neato vacuum already had the option to manually control it through the app. I always assumed this is nothing special, but now learned this is quite a unique feature.
One of the main reasons I didn't get really into the electrical side of things is because of how frustrating it was to have a chip or component break immediately. Especially if it is a components component and the entire thing need replacement.
It can be quite annoying sometimes.....
@@greatscottlab indeed, especially in the starting when you buy your 'first' components...
plus sometimes it's really expensive 😂😅
i had some moments like that
@@Davidslabofficial 😬😅😂
@@Davidslabofficial recently at work I got a 300 dollar controller and fried the interface part of it by metering out valued and accidentally touching two contacts.
Of course it wasn't a part I could replace nor did I know how it worked to fix it. I think they had the buttons converted into some special serial signal. Was super dumb.
And of course the entire controller needed the buttons to do anything.
So the buttons not working made the entire thing useless.
I have always loved the idea of taking electronics and adding features that they don't have, through software or hardware, also i would love to see a video of you salvaging electronics from an old device and making a completely different new device from it
Some robot vacuums can actually have their software replaced with an open-source alternative; I think the open-source system was called "Valetudo" or something like that. I haven't gotten around getting one myself yet though, but I'm gonna be looking for one compatible with that.
That would be the best solution, since you'd know you're not being tracked. Particularly concerning prospect if your vacuum has a microphone and / or a camera.
As long time valetudo user I expected that it would be valetudo indeed. But I think everything looks like a nail when you are working the whole day with a hammer
@@Booruvcheek you can always wrap your vacuum in tinfoil....
@@stoojinator Wow, you're so funny!
I gotta say, I respect you more because you openly admitted when you hit your limit. Love the channel, keep making great videos!
Well done, It was the right choice to not risk the robot electronics and I appreciate that you told us that.
I have this exact model! If you never use the mopping function then you could perhaps use the water tank space to include your custom electronics?
Sadly I love to use the water tank function
flame thrower to get all those really stubborn spots clean 🫧🪥
@@RealJohnnyDingo Whoah there buddy. Just because the sauce from the fajita mix is a bit stubborn doesn't mean you burn down the whole kitchen. 😅
First thing I thought of as you moved your robot vacuum was how it'd be a good fighting robot base - remove excess parts, add in controls & weapons & armor until it's ready for Robot Wars!
That also sounds fun....
I have a Irobot robot Vacuum and it has a UART port for maintenance propose , but i hook up my pc and i can send commands to go forward, turn left, switch on the vaccum motor etc..
That sounds awesome👍 I will have a look.
Thanks for the honesty about smoking the part... I have been inside a couple robots and your right.
Great content! one thing I would emphasize though, is first checking if the pins are Input or Output first(by disconnecting the motor and testing the output), and then using a resistor to connect to the microcontroller to limit unwanted/accidental current shorts, that way everything is taken care of. Sometimes when we're not careful, and one of those pins of the motor is an output pin, and we try to drive it, it might result in bad things!
Maybe build in a curve for the acceleration and deceleration when commanding movement forward or backward. Otherwise, very cool. I'd probably make it permanent, but also able to be enabled or disabled via the control software.
I have one of those Ecovac vacuums and have taken it apart "just to see", and the amount of technology inside them is amazing!
The software that runs them is great too, as all the decisions that are made, with all the different inputs from the sensors and the LIDAR, means alot of processing is going on.
I would only mess around with it IF I had another one that I use and the "spare" could suffer failure.
Thanks for your post! Interesting!
I would have probably opted to continue the hacking quest on a slightly older, used model that doesn’t include as much sensor tech so that your custom controller can be built up to include any sensors available for the micro controller so you can perfect the ‘better than stock’ vhacuum robot.
Great video !! If your model supports IR . You could use an IR remote to achieve that. The IR remote code available in the tasmota documentation worked for my deebot 500. Used esp8266 +tasmota to command the robot via phone to move forward, turn left or right.
this is super cool!!! rumba whatever needs to add a controller to them. kids will like to clean a lot then. we made a 1985 buick 4 door remote controlled in the 90’s. it was crazy. people would ride in it while we drove it in the field. we jumped it over some erosion bumps and killed the whole drive train.
Old Neato vacuums have a serial console that lets you do this kind of stuff without any hardware mods - you just hook up your microcontroller in the USB port and then you can control the vacuum any way you want, including XBox controller hooked to your phone.
My xiaomi roborock s5 have control remote at the app. It's not that responsive but things will get done if i have wish. Great video!
Thanks. Yep. Heard from others about the Xiaomi ones. I am jealous.
I would continue by hooking a RC controller and use the proportional input. Would also be fun to decode the signals output by the receiver
You need a soft start to remove this over power, but, I agree that at the start is too much to add this feature ;). Only if you can mount it above the top sensors on a custom PCB which will be much smaller, might make sense though.
He'll have to be really careful around the couch! It'll be like James Bond in the Double Decker Bus going under the low bridge!! 😲🤣😂
Could you mount the additional electronics above the LIDAR and run the wires down one of the supports to not block it? I would push forward just because those wheelies on manual mode are hilarious
The slight pitch up when the motors start reminds me of some of the robots from Robot Wars. Activate!
If you added a compressed-air driven 'flipper', the bot could even tidy up for you!
I've got a really old robo vac that was powered by Lead Acid, now got it running with Lipo from recycled disposable vapes.
I plan to use ESP32 cam for custom control over the internet, plenty of space inside, I will have manual/auto selectable from the webpage and video feed hosted on the ESP.
Sounds awesome!
Well Scott as being a subscriber for so many years I highly arpeciate when you fail interly and show to us that is is possible even to the best ones :D of us !
Always a pleasure to see what projects you come up with. Should you run out of ideas and you have the skills, maybe you could make a bike radar?
You have abilities that go far beyond us mortals, What I admire most is your ability to realize your ideas, seems like you always complete your projects.
Another great video. I really enjoyed seeing how you reverse engineered the controls for the BLDC motor. This whole video was enjoyable. Thanks for sharing.
Next project: make it an autonomous gatling turret.
Haha😉 On it.
Killjoy bot?
Claymore roomba.
i hope no one takes that idea, and runs with it.
@@priyankagosh2127 Well, he IS German, so it's already half way there! ;D
Great video - both informative and entertaining!
I won't forget frying Roomba with a single dropped screw. Through all the debugging and repairing I was disconnecting the battery... except for the final assembly 🤦♂️ I feel your pain bro!
Fascinating and enjoyable video. The 'popping a wheelie' aspect whenever you tap 'go forward' could be explored. Obviously applying full power to the drive wheels is the issue and we could experiment with various ramping of the power. I've always loved tinkering with process / motion controls and this is a 'rabbit hole' I'd end up diving down for days. lol Thanks again for another enjoyable bit of 'hacking'.
Very good and it’s always fun to hear “and I’ll see you next time”
I've always wanted to do this with mine...
Perhaps, if you create an extension of the robot frame and reposition the sensors, things will work out. The robot doesn't know its size, it just "reacts" to the sensors.
Creating an extension of the structure and printing it on a 3d printer, you would gain space to add the components and put the project into practice. The robot would get bigger, but it would also get better or at least more fun.
Its always fun to see you Work on Consumer electronics
Thanks :-)
That's cool! Looks like your forward function needs a speed ramp up function but otherwise that's pretty awesome. I too was wondering where you'd put all those electronics.
In old roombas UART is exposed on a top panel (under cover), and command specification is publicly available. Having some fun with it couple of years ago.
What a coincidence, I recently bought a vacuum cleaner robot. Mine hasn't the house mapping feature, but it does have the manual movement through an IR remote control. I've been thinking of a possible way to use that system to track its movement via a microcontroller, map the house, and control it with IR signals. I see it very hard to pull off, but it sounds like a fun experience
It would be nice to know what happened to damage your robot for those of us that might poke about inside one.
I would definitely continue with custom body base using a 3d printer to mount everything from scratch!Sounds cool 🙂
Agreed
Great idea
Glad to see I'm not the only one who toasts electrical gadgets while poking around in them.
I could definitely see the fun in being able to remote control the robot yourself. However, these machines aren't cheap, and if you're getting any actual use out of it, then you have come to rely on it. If an accident means you break it and have to go without it or replace it at considerable cost, then it just isn't worth it. It's the same reason lockpicking enthusiasts always say, "Don't pick a lock that you rely on." If something goes wrong, you wouldn't want to be locked out of your house, or have to leave your house unlocked.
If you find you just need to clean a small area that got missed and is noticeably dirty, your best option might just be a dust pan and broom or a stick vacuum so you can quickly and easily do it manually. :) Sometimes our interest in technology leads us to making things more complicated and time-consuming, when it should be to make things faster and easier.
Remove the light sensor to make room for the extra components and add a camera to the nose instead! RC Roomba is an awesome toy, don't abandon it now!
...but seriously good stuff as always! Maybe I'll jot RC Roomba in my future project video list 🤔
I think it's a great oversight by robot vacuum manufacturers to not include a manual control mode. Sometimes you just need to vacuum one specific spot quickly without having to haul a hand operated vacuum cleaner to that spot.
If you purchase eufy, you already can control via remote or wifi. No need custom modification
Maybe you could ramp up the power to the wheels gradually using PWM to prevent the lurching. Very interesting what you have here.
I have the Roborock S7 MaxV, you can control the vacuum robot in the app and drive it around like a remote play car. And there is a camera built in, so you can see where you're going. There is even a microphone and a speaker, so once you reach a destination, you can speak with someone around. You can even tell it to go somewhere on the map, watch it driving there with the camera and control it on the way or once it arrived. But you can not program it do do things, just a cleaning schedule
That sounds awesome.
I got the same vacuum, and during Christmas when I was not at home, I used it to drive around in my house to check on it. :)
I have a Husqvarna Automower that I would LOVE to manually control. It has the uncanny ability to get stuck in the dumbest of places, and if it only reversed, it would unstick itself. Instead, I have to go out and physically pull the automower backwards, then tell it via software to resume mowing again (and then physically block the area it got stuck).
Hope the manufacturer sees this and gives an update to do what you are trying to do. Manual control!
I have an idea for your next project. A small device that collects mobile phone's details (IMEI and whatever else data that can be collected) of every person that shows up in your house. This device is to protect against spontaneous intruders, perhaps drunks who broke into your house and unwisely have their mobile phone on them.
That's actually a really intriguing concept
I think you're missing the cat riding the sweeper to supervise the cleaning.😁
1:03 using the vacuum cleaner as a solder fume extractor 🤣🤣
amazing video as always. I love how you figured out the functions of the 5 pins on the vacuum motor
Some vacuums offer manual control out of the box
I'm so glad to see using a drill to remove screws. . Combined with manual magnetic screwdriver
FWIW, a common solution to not having space inside is to design and 3d print (or w/e) a case extender. (i.e. extrude the outline of the division between two parts.) In this situation, it would sit between the base and the top shell. Designing it would be tricky, but the result would look like factory original and as much space inside as you could ever want.
Add a saw attached to the lidar spinner, and here we are with the 2023 edition of robotwars ❤
I have a Robo Vac too, only 1000Pa, but does a Great job for me, I have wondered about fitting UV Leds to the RoboVac, to help kill any microbes / virus in the carpet, over time, this might have an effect. Possibly triggered by a vibration sensor so it switches on and off automatically. If the UV leds were in the Vac exhaust too, the UV light might similarly have a slight sterilising effect on the air in the house. If the Vac is on for 1hr, that's a lot of Air and carpet / flooring sterilised, two or three times per week.
you should check the main board for a serial UART, and see if you can hack remote control functionality into the firmware with the already existing hardware.
What a fun project! Maybe I'll try it out if I find a broken vacuum robot in the electronics trash bin!
You actually need just the ESP 32 board. All the power electronics are on the motherboard already and are easy to identify and tap in to. I would use a PWM ramp on the drive motors to make the movement less jerky and maybe slow it down a little.
Great project. Always learning things from you
Maybe a seeeduino Xiao would fit. Also, no prototype board - just using wires.
Nice projects. Would love to see a in-depth version of each, with tips and tricks.
I would Fit a Nvidia Jetson Nano + Pixhawk cube Allows for a RC Radio Receiver + RC Remote Control transmitter Gun with lots of telemetry feedback & extra buttons
Thought you were going to hack it and add it to home assistant or prevent it connecting to the internet, I did this with my roomba.
Fun to watch still!
I literally did the exact same process with the BLDC vacuum motor I stole from an old roomba a few weeks ago, I wish you posted this before I spent some hours troubleshooting the motor lol
Love your channel & any knowledge you have on wireless power would be appreciated. Our research group created a wireless power transmitter that consumes 30 watts of power & has a range of over 2,000ft when a receiver coil is Earth grounded.
9:20 I remember when i used to play with the MIT app inventor
Some robot vacuums have a serial connection you can tap that will allow you to send arbitrary commands to the unit.
The rpm sensor is for stall detection. I removed that wire on another brand of vacuum to clear a fault.
For supported vacuum robots I recommend Valetudo, a alternative firmware which gives you many new possibilities and also a remote for the vacuum robot.
Thanks for the tip
Valetudo is amazing and I love having full local control of the robot
Another option would be to install your electronic board on top of the lidar sensor and route your cable wires down, hopefully the lidar will just ignore the small wires. :)
My Deebot N79 (an older model from the same manufacturer) has a control function built in, is controlled used the infrared remote control included with the bot.
I can not believe that the more advanced model you have do not have it.
At least it fun to see and we also make vaccum robot following same procedures
I suggest you to use ROS feature to control the vacuum cleaner robot because it's easy to learn and achieve.
Waited for you video and it's posted .Good work
Hope you enjoyed it!
thanks to you I started to look into the mit app!
i have an i-life a4 robot vacuum cleaner. You can control it with the remote. Not expensive on ali express. It might be nice to remove the internals and use it.
two boards that plug into the top of the lidar, one with the custom electronics, another to simply re-bridge the original circuits.
I'd have added a gamepad instead of a phone for control. Maybe a speed controller of sorts for the drive motors so you can get that fine motor control. Then again someday I'll build myself an rc lawnmower with some kind of camera so I don't burn the snot out of myself every year haha
I always love your projects. Thank you for making and losing contents with such details.
You could mount the circuits on the side, right?
The sensors you missed are for detecting stairs and other drops. When the IR of one LED is not picked up by the sensor besides it, the robot is about to take a dive and stops.
really nice project! I definitely would like to see a follow-up.
What kind of microcontroller is used in the Deebot? Maybe one could reverse engineer the software.
pardon my french, but that damn thing is FAST! doing wheelies everytime
I bought a MP vac like 8 years ago. No wet mopping, it had just enough space to cram a Pi Zero W into it, relays and a few other components (IR transmitter). Was able to remote control it, but it was sluggish and not super responsive (IR signals bouncing inside the shiny plastic housing I guess).
Had it linked to Alexa too using an Amazon cloud service (ec2?).
.... Then Amazon upgraded and it broke the voice functionality 😅
I wonder if that BLDC driver circuit uses an integrated BLDC controller IC like Allegro's A89301. Those three chips on the board may have been dual MOSFETs.
The model I own, Ecozy RV-LD200A already has this feature built in.
It's a great thing that my Xiaomi Robot 1 already has the remote control functionality.
Watching you do this shit is amazing. I am amazed on what humans can do.
Great job Great Scott
this was a really interesting and full of insights video. Really sad to hear that the wacuum cleaner got a bit hurt during the atempt of upgrade but glad it suvived and is feeling better :D. With that aside this little experiment was nice to watch. good job. now you got me thimking of a lawn mower :))
Great video! was looking to hack underwater robot Aiper and run into this!
That robot is the bane of my existence 😅 ... It's great when it works, but it's so easily confused by chair legs. I often find it tangled up between some bar stools, even though it has a clear path back to the charging station 😒
In the end I prepare the house before running the robot, putting chairs on tables, removing charging cables and cat food bowls. All of that stuff that you would normally just move around when manually vacuuming.
Then it updates its map constantly (nice), which means it will recognize closed doors as walls and just refuse to go in the rooms beyond. It says in the manual to keep all doors open, but (a) that's just not possible with a toddler and a cat (b) apparently "ring-shaped" room layouts aren't handled well.
Scanning the house works great, but the automatic room detection is wonky and manually editing the rooms just refuses to work in the GUI (probably a me problem).
Oh ... And it's noisy as hell with the scrubbing plate attached.
All in all I'd still give stupid thing a 7/10 ... It's great if it works, but it often does not 🤷
OMG!
I own the same darned robot (Deebot 920) and had the SAME problem with my right motor occasionally shutting down. Did you ever figure out the issue?
It seems to happen when it finds too great of a load, or when its been operating for too long.
I tested the motor (like you did, by applying a voltage directly) and everything seems fine. So my gut tells me that the circuit board shuts that motor down when there is too high of a draw (like when its stuck), or that whatever drives it overheats and then shuts down.
Have you found the culprit? I ordered a back up motor just in case that solves the issue.
Thanks for the video.
We make, have fun, and put it back to the original and try not to feel the guilt.
True