Hacking Roomba

There are a huge number of interesting and useful sites on the Net to help you learn and practice electronics hacking. Here are a few I’ve found useful when hacking Roombas.

Roomba Related

• iRobot.com/developers
  — official iRobot hacking site, with ROI/SCI specification.
• Roomba Review
  — good general info site about all things Roomba
• Roomba Review Robotic Hacking forum
  — a good place to meet other people doing Roomba hacking
• MyRoomBud Roomba costumes
  — fun costumes for your Roomba
• roomba.pbwiki.com
  — Roomba hacking wiki moderated by Phil Torrone
• Roomba Buyer’s Guide
  — an iRobot investor watching for great Roomba deals. Via his site I got two Roombas for $60 each on Amazon.
• Element Direct
  — they have the most awesome MindControl add-on for your Roomba which is a super-tiny pencil eraser-sized plugin micrcontroller (AVR, like Arduino). Its stealth size means only you’ll know that your Roomba has extra brains on-board.
• RoombaDevTools.com
  — offers fully-assembled and -tested workalikes of the serial tether and Bluetooth interface presented in the book. A great way to get started hacking Roombas without needing to know how to solder! I’ve purchased many RooTooths from these guys, they’re great.

Hacking Sites

• MAKE Blog
• Hackaday
• HackedGadgets
• D.I.Y. Live
• Take It Apart.net

Electronics Tutorials

• How to equip your EE lab
  — Good list of tools needed and/or recommend for electronics hacking
• How to Solder
• WebEE Tutorials

Example Circuits

• ePanorama.net
  — huge repository of electronics circuits and tips
• Circuits for the Hobbyist
  — another great repository

Part Suppliers

• New Parts
  • SparkFun
    — Arudino board and shield, and many other neat gizmos.
  • Jameco
    — General electronic parts, easy-to-use, also has computer parts.
  • Digikey
    — Exhaustive parts supplier. Cheaper than Jameco usually, has more variation, more hard-to-find parts.
• Surplus Parts
  • C & H Surplus
    — Has lots of interesting and strange parts from aerospace companies
  • All Electronics
    — Good for cables, power supplies, and some LEDs.
  • MPJA
    — Also good for power supplies and just weird stuff.

Books

• Physical Computing
  — a great book on building smart objects
• The Art of Electronics
  — the bible of electronics
• Getting Started in Electronics
  — by Forest M. Mims III, the godfather of hacking