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Asked — Edited

Roomba Platform

My name is Steve and I am excited and looking forward to receiving my ez robot kit that I recently ordered. I have 2 roomba 4210,s (Serial 4210 041116 E 5765). I think they are too old to have the SCI required feature. My receipt for this unit was jan, 2005. It appears it may difficult to find an appropriate osmo dongle? Irobot still sells the Create robot, which I think has the req. feature to operate w/ezrobot. I am concerned about buying a used newer unit on Ebay. I already have a new battery for my 400 series discovery white model, that would work on the bare bones Create.
My grandkids got me going on robotics again after I operated my 25 yr old James comadore robot. James didn,t obey many of voice commands anymore. I also got my 16 yr old Lynx project going, that operates on DOS. Time for something new. Are there any cons for the Irobot Create? Thanks Steve S


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#1  
I have both the Blue and the Gray(smoke) OSMO units so depending on which one you may need I can loan them out for a small fee. Go to my website and send me a message:


Robot-Doc
#2  
I have had many irobot robots. The create is a very nice platform for very reasonalable investment. But, I got my one of my irobots for only $4 at GoodWill. It was 50% off. I bought the create new. I also had a model 530 which was one of the best. I blew it's communication port and had to buy another motherboard, so I said "no". The older ones were sort of weaker to me. It could have been a bad battery, I don't know now. If you can afford it, the iCreate is the best, I think, and the more compatible.

Good Luck! You are going to LOVE EZB!
PRO
USA
#3  
Thanks for the response,s. I am leaning towards getting a new Icreate.
MovieMaker have u operated your Icreate w EZB? I like having the EZ robot community, very practical and excellent idea. Thanks Steve
#4  
This has nothing to do with EZB but while looking at what Icreate is all about I found this. It's off the hook and very funny to me:

"A hamster is positioned on the back side of the Create robot inside a clear plastic sphere. By running in the sphere, the hamster controls where the robot moves and the robot's speed."

Maybe EZB could be interfaced with servos and Sonar and mounted on a multi legged platform? So when the hamster runs the ball in any direction the robot would crawl there. Imaging what an out of control and random robot you would have?

Steve S, maybe you could move in this direction? Of course then you's have a robot you would need to feed and clean up after. (Robot poop?)

User-inserted image
#5  
@dschulpius If you build it with an actual Roomba vacuum instead of the iCreate, the cleanup part is taken care of, and you just need to deal with feeding:)

Alan
PRO
Canada
#7  
Hey All, just wanted to post this here to help anyone out who is looking at re-purposing their Roomba as a robot platform, it mentions DJ and the EZ-B in a few spots but it is more of an info dump on the Roomba firmware and SCI:
Here's a link to my blog
#8  
@ steve,

If you will look under the projects pictues, you will see marti which is the robot I made out of a roomba.

correction, not the roomba, but the i-Create.
#9  
Steve if you are looking for the OSMO hacker dongle i have it,
I gives full SCI commands to the older models
send me $5 and then ship it back to me when done with it
i have over 30 IROBOT roomba's,AND I USED IT TO CHANGE THE FIRMWARE ON IT with the OSMO HACKER
#10  
Also did many other mods ,one is took all motors and vacuum parts out and added a shelf inside the dust bin,

second i upgrade the motors to a much higher torque and h-bridge design
and added a second battery and special switching circuit to charge the batteries

looking at next to add another optical feedback for the motor to make it quadrature output

DAVE on the hamster idea,what look better is a gyro design inside it or under it
#11  
Also STEVE i sell every part made for roomba and neato models very cheap,best seller is the NEATO LIDAR (laser navigation sensor)
there are many neato lidar hacks to use it as a navigation sensor
PRO
USA
#12  
Thank you for the respone,s. I was suprised my old 2 roomba,s operated with EZB thru the SCI. The oldest one had a firmware update from I-Robot years ago after developing the circle dance. That fixed that issue, but gears in the brush motor stripped. It does not move very well either, does a slight turn when it stops movement.
I was starting my EZB build with my 2nd roomba white 4000, but it developed a stopping issue after running away and getting stuck. I have resolved my bluetooth range problem by adding a cord from USB port and clipping the dongle on top of my laptop. Since that incident of getting stuck, it keeps stopping after a min. or two of movements(maybe I damaged a drive motor or circuit?) If I re-initialize of movement panel, it might go a little longer than stop again. I did repair the sound issue by replacing the speaker w one from radio shack. I am not sure if cleaning both roomba drives would help?
I now started my EZB build w my Create. It moves much faster than the roomba,s. When I slow it down on the movement panel, it no longer goes straight. I am trying to mount things allowing acces to the buttons on the Create. I have read there is a on/off toggle pin on the cargo bay pins? I am hoping I don,t encounter any more runaway issues. Since adding the USB cable, I have successfully navigated it to different rooms utilizing the camera without issues. Maybe I need some type of safety switch to shut it down.
I have built a 2 servo head w camera, that I successfully controlled w a nitendo remote. I made a mistake of using the recorder with the remote and now I can no longer save files with the recorder. It must have been too big of a file. I tried updating ARC, creating a new file with one servo, but still could not save a file with the recorder. I even tried a restore on my laptop, to the date prior to the file, but the restore failed stating unspecified error, did not restore. I also tried a new file and saving to the cloud, but no luck. I am learning and having fun. Love my EZ-Robot kit.
Thankyou to everone who responded. Dave, Moviemaker, Robotdoc, Skater, etc. I will do pics.
Steve S
#13  
STEVE S havent had any problems with my 4200 series or ICREATE'S MODELS with commands using EZB Movement Panel OR using roborealm AND other Movement Panel software

If you need a drive motors i have many cheap or my new higher torque design on how to build it

STEVE S here is a link to my EZB roomba project

my EZB roomba project
Also made a turtlebot platform using roomba with ROS LINUX software
PRO
USA
#14  
Thank you also to robotmaker(I may eventually try to repair my roomba,s). My plan was to build w roomba first, to get all issues resolved, without damaging my new Create. Do you have brush gears and what is the price? Both units have stripped gears and drive issues. I have a goal of directing my robot to a specific rooms and I want to build or buy arms. I was going to load recorder files to direct it, but that is not viable at this time. My Email is sdstud1975@yahoo.com
Steve S
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