New Roomba Prototyping Cable for Arduino
In the book I discuss how creating a “Roomba Prototyping Plug” is useful when prototyping Roomba circuits with microcontrollers. The plug described is general purpose for use with any microcontroller and is easily built.
A slight variation of that plug allows a Roomba to work with an Arduino board with no additional circuitry or wiring. Not only does it allow you to control the Roomba from Arduino, but the Roomba also powers the Arduino board.
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Instead of soldering wire onto the back of headers (tricky because they are short), I like to use male crimp pins - jameco #145357. Slip them into connector housings (#100811 for 2 contact, 157382 for 3 contact) to prevent them from touching each other and you’re good to go.
Bjoern, that’s a great idea. I’ll try that out for the next cable I build. I admit I only did the header soldering because I happened to have them laying around in my junk box. :)
I’m curious about the powering aspect. It looks from the pictures like you’ve got the Roomba’s PWR and GND wires going right into the 9V sockets on the Arduino. I thought there was 16V coming off those wires? How does this not fry the Arduino? Or maybe there’s a 78L05 tucked away in a corner I’m not seeing :) ?
The Arduino has on it a standard 7805 voltage regulator that can take input voltages anywhere from 7.5V to 35V. The “9V” input really means “7.5-35V”. But it’s easier to think of it as a single value.
Okay, that would explain it. I guess I’ll just have to look closer @ my Arduino board(s).
Thanks!
I made one tonight. It works :)
I made it with a “floating” DD pin ’cause I’ve got a BlueSMiRF on the prototype shield of my Arduino and need pin 2 for that.
Thanks for the neat idea!