hujanais / roombie

Roomba on the internet hackathon

Roomba on the Internet

Overview

I have been a weekly user of a Roomba for the past 15 years and absolutely love it on my hardwood floors. I even bought one for my parents who also use it perhaps once every 2-3 weeks. Anyhow, recently I found this old semi-functional Roomba in my basement and thought that it could be fun to use it in some kind project.
A quick search online revealed that the Roomba has an RS-232 communication port and published communication protocols from IRobot. After more searches, we found lots of super cool projects that people have done so this is looking more and more promising.

Project goal

By now, we have figured out that yes the Roomba can be "hacked" and we could do something with it. The question is what shall we do that is not just a copy-paste project from what we found on the internet. Something that is fun but something achievable in 1-2 weeks of work. After some thinking, here are the end-goals.

1. Have the ability to see all the sensor data from the Roomba while it is doing a clean.
2. Have the ability to drive the Roomba like an RC car.
3. Do this on the internet so that the grandparents can also see it and drive the Roomba.
4. Ok, nothing is really novel and have been done by folks in various format but I like this idea so that my kids can also be highly involved with.
5. Have a software playground where my daughter can work with the Roomba such as writing the docking procedure, navigating from 1 room to another, fun stuff like that.

Design

Ok, even though the work is supposed to be a collaboration of 1 adult and 2 teens, it obviously ended up with 90% of the work on my end but most of it is just the R&D work and re-usable code that would be too much for them. They did help build the electronics, write some C++ code and write the website for the project which I am very proud of their work on that.

The Big Picture

Ok, here is the 10000m view of the deployment. The React dashboard The ESP, Roomba and a USB powerpack so we can run the Roomba untethered.

Technical

I have had experience using Raspberry Pis and Arduinos but was introduced to the ESP microcontroller from a friend and it is truly amazing especially it is easily available for $4!

[Picture]

• WebSocket is used to do bi-directional communication between the ESP to the Node server.
• The website will received relayed real-time data using another WebSocket connection but commands from the website are sent to the Node server using an HTTP RestAPI instead. I find this easier to test and debug using tools like Postman or browser.

Example of data/command flow

    sequenceDiagram
    Roomba/ESP ->> NodeJS: Establish websocket connection
    Roomba/ESP ->> NodeJS: sends sensor data via websocket
    NodeJS ->> Web: relays sensor data via websocket
    Web ->> NodeJS: Send drive command
    NodeJS ->> Roomba/ESP: relays drive command via websocket	 

Loading

Example of waking roomba up.

Even though the Roomba will go to sleep after 5 minutes of inactivity, the ESP controller is still connected to the NodeJS server via websocket. This gives us a nice way to wake the Roomba up remotely.

    sequenceDiagram
     Web ->> NodeJS: Send HTTP Wakeup command
     NodeJS ->> ESP: Relays websocket Wakeup command to the ESP.
     ESP ->> Roomba: ESP received the command and triggers I/O pins to wake Roomba
     ESP ->> NodeJS: Send Roomba sensor data
     NodeJS ->> Web: Web dashboard comes alive 

Loading

ESP-8266 to Roomba Schematic

Coding goals

A very import criteria of this project is to not make it so overwhelming that it is not fun for my kids. Therefore, I embarked on some extra effort of wrap a lot of the Roomba and Websocket code into a re-usable classes. Ok, I am very rusty on C++ and have used it only on basic ESP/Arduino coding so it took me a while to get my sea legs back on that. I think I did accomplish that well and my teens can just spend time with working on the logical programming of the Roomba. You can see a few references that I have listed below that have been instrumental to getting this project off the ground.

Show me the code. Github.

I am very pleased that my son spent 2 solid days to build up the web dashboard using React and it has been working beautifully. We did most of our work debugging our work using a RaspberryPi to host the NodeJS and React servers and then when we are all happy, we deployed them to Heroku and Vercel and grandparents can see and play with the Roomba. Main goal accomplished!

• ESP-Roomba C++ code
• Web Dashboard React [Written by my son Andrew who is a senior in high school]
• NodeJS-Express server [This is just a very simple quick and dirty server to get going]

The NodeJS server is deployed on Heroku and the React dashboard is hosted on Vercel.

[Please note that authentication is not implemented or deemed important for this fun project]

Stretch Goals

1. Here are some extra credit work that I am working with my daughter on. Adding a digital compass so that we can try to see if we can build some kind of basic mapping capability to the Roomba.
2. Add a camera so that we can give the user a POV live feed.
3. Write our own cleaning routing? Any where we can throw in some machine learning?

References

• https://www.marcelvarallo.com/my-lazy-ass-esp8266-to-roomba-500-series-connector/ [this has been instrumental for getting the entire project off the ground to figure out how to even connect to the Roomba]
• https://github.com/johnboiles/esp-roomba-mqtt [Most of my Roomba library code is inspired or straight copy-pasted from this library]
• https://randomnerdtutorials.com/projects-esp8266/ [This is my go to when I was learning about the ESP8266 micro-controller]
• https://www.irobotweb.com/~/media/MainSite/PDFs/About/STEM/Create/iRobot_Roomba_600_Open_Interface_Spec.pdf [The IRobot RS232 communication documentation. This is a first rate doc]

Disclaimer

This is not intended to be a technical document but rather just documentation of what we did mostly for the benefit of my kids and myself. Please do your own due diligence and do this on your own risk regarding human safety and Roomba safety. Having said that I do hope this can inspire you to your own fun project. Happy DIY-ing.