Asked — Edited

Charging Your Robot

I know the Roomba vacumn has an automatic recharge feature which is very cool. However I would like to have my robot when is is hungry to feed itself. Has anyone come up with a solution to this yet. I have been reading a lot of posts but this one I have not seen.


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Synthiam
#1  

Use the roomba as your robot base :)

EZ-B connects to it and can control dock seeking

#2  

Wow now I am confused, I want to build a larger robot platform usin wheel chair motors and tracks. How would I use the Roomba as the robot base for just the charging part. I know the EZ-B is a God send for novice robot builders and if I could make a robot on a larger scale and still use the Roomba's functionality I could have it cut my grass, with an electric weed wacker in the front. Also how does the EZ-B control the dock seek?

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Synthiam
#3  

:) Tutorial section is your friend: https://synthiam.com/Tutorials/Hardware.aspx?id=21

I haven't done a dock seeking robot... Outside it won't work because it is Infrared. But inside you can use the guts of a roomba.

As for an outside dock seeking robot.. Hmmmmmmmmmmm, that's a good question. Some kind of beacon would be necessary. GPS can be "almost" accurate enough to at least get your robot into the area of the charging station.

The rest woudl be a bit more work

United Kingdom
#4  

Hi

You cauld have the robot follow a buried wire . connect the wire to a audio amp (old radio) ,it will pulse to the music . mount two coils or guitar pickups to the front of the robot and have it line follow straight to the charger.

PS use gps to get to the area of the charger and then pick up the cable for final nav .

Steve_C

#5  

Great answers, sorry again about the confusion but i would only have the robot inside when charging was needed. Cutting the grass will be done by my new RoBomower, it has an auto charging system but I am not gutting that, $2000.00 don't you know.