Developer Preetham Kyanam has written a library for any Arduino programmer seeking to mess around with iRobot’s Roomba and Create 2 robots — constructing on the corporate’s official Open Interface Specification.
“ArduRoomba is an Arduino library that permits interfacing with iRobot Create 2 and suitable iRobot Roomba fashions (500 sequence by way of 800 sequence non-Wi-Fi fashions),” Kyanam explains of the library. “Developed based mostly on the iRobot Create 2 Open Interface (OI) Specification, this library is particularly designed for [the] Arduino UNO R3 and UNO R4 Minima/WiFi.”
The library comes with directions for wiring an Arduino UNO-format board to the Open Interface connector on suitable iRobot units — although it solely extends to assist for the last-generation iRobot Create 2 platform, relatively than the corporate’s newest Create 3. For the brand new Arduino UNO R4 WiFi, it additionally comes with a warning to not use the header linked to the Espressif ESP232-S3 coprocessor lest the 5V indicators from the Roomba trigger injury to the three.3V microcontroller.
In case you fancy hacking round together with your non-Wi-Fi Roomba, the ArduRoomba library is strictly what you want. (📷: Preetham Kyanam)
Kyanam has examined the library with the iRobot Roomba 551, as offered wholesale at Costco, and expects it to be suitable with the iRobot Roomba 500, 600, 700, and 800 households when specified with out Wi-Fi connectivity, together with the Create 2 do-it-yourself robotic platform. “Different boards/MCUs [Microcontroller Units] perhaps suitable,” the developer says of the library’s board assist, “however haven’t been examined.”
As soon as put in within the Arduino IDE, the library permits for programmatic management of suitable iRobot units — with instance sketches displaying how one can management the robotic’s movement and ship it trying to find its docking station and for controlling the robotic remotely over a serial hyperlink.
The library is now accessible on GitHub below the reciprocal GNU Basic Public License 3.
