robotmaker
I buy a lot of NEATO XV-11 ROBOTIC vacuum cleaner and take apart and sell the parts mostly the LASER
A looking at the idea that DJ uses to control IROBOT ROOMBA with serial and it can be done the same way.
FEW hack sites has info on the serial commands and they have it controlled by another computer
NEATO XV11 if you read the many reviews on it ,its a lot better then ROOMBA ,one main reason it uses a LIDAR tracking system ,where ROOMBA uses a IR BEACON system
SO it will make a great robotic base,used ones on ebay are about $100
MAY be latter DJ can make a Movement Panel for it,but for now it can be controlled by serial using scripts.
LIKE to hear any good or bad comments on it,and will be looking at the code soon, do need to open it and solder wire to ground and TX line.
Also as a robotic base i found that the neato xv-11 can carry more weight then the roomba 4200 we use also I dont know about the 500 and 600 series .
ROBOT-DOC if you want to loan me the ROOMBA 500 OR 600 SERIES i will pay shipping back and forth for some test i would like to do.
I am very curious how it works out for me.you can do tests but i would like to run my own.
ROBOT-DOC i see you have thermal tape,where did you get it ? Since i need a big roll for a design i am working on,dont want a short piece that you are selling.
I am designing a temperature sensor for fans and for my fish tank and other stuff.
robotmaker, you can locate the thermal tape on ebay, lots of sellers. Also roundtrip shipping would cost more between Louisiana and Florida than what you would pay on ebay for a working 500 model.
robot-doc would not the shipping cost on the 500 model be about the same,plus i need to add the cost of the unit
MAY be a used one can get cheap,but hard to tell if its working good, i have the schematics on 400 series but not 500 and 600 they use a different size board
ALSO guys since talking about the neato xv-11 unit,i have many sensors i can sell for free or very cheap.
LIKE i did for REX ,like sharp optical sensors little like the ones we use only short range 8 inch inches, have about 90 of them may be more and small switches great for bumper contacts,and magnetic sensors
VERY high torque motor with feedback (brush motor)
I was able to get this scan from the Neato XV-11 today from the terminal program in the ARC and entered the data in Excel. I scanned the inside of a box which produced this Flat Land perspective:
But I haven't yet found a way to read the data. I'm wanting to read Neato's Accelerometer z access as I raise it up to scan a room. I'll then store 180 of the 360 samples in an array with the z access. I'll then convert that data into a .dfx file for exploration in 3D.
I also plan to mount the entire robot onto my 4WD monster truck.
Any ideas how to send and receive data from the XV-11 and the ARC?
Here's a link to all the commands: Neato Commands
Here's a video of my methods so far:
Thanks,
Bill
RobotMaker,
Any luck reading the Neato Lidar data into the EZ-Script software yet? I would prefer to use a Neato Lidar unit taken out of a Neato. My wife would get mad if I sacrificed her vacuum for my robot.
RobotMaker is selling them cheap on ebay.
The EZ-B and ARC can send serial commands through any of the 20 digital ports with the SendSerial() command. It can't receive though.
However, if you have software that can receive the data this can be passed in to ARC through Telnet or Http. Telnet is the cleanest method, you just need to connect the program which collects the data to ARC via Telnet and send EZ-Script commands over Telnet to pass in the data to be stored in variables or an array.
If your software can't do that then EventGhost can with the serial plugin. Simply use the plugin to receive the serial data and use python to telnet the data in to ARC.