It's ROOMBA Time

Today, while I was looking around for something to do, I came across my mom's old Roomba and I decided I was going to try and hack it.


For those of you who don't know, the Roomba is actually a fairly simple robot to hack, because it has a built in port Roomba Open Interface (ROI) Port that takes an 7-pin connector. This allows anyone with a bit of mechanical skills to build their own connector and begin to mess around with the Roomba's coding. And if you aren't the technically minded, you can always purchase a pre-made ROI interfacer from RoboDynamics or another online provider of Roomba interfacing technology. I, however, prefer to go hardcore and make my own.

Because I just decided today to finally getting around to hacking our family Roomba, I still need to build an adapter and all that. I will be posting my progress on this blog, along with explanations and tutorials of everything I do so that you can all have the opportunity to hack a Roomba as well, if you choose.

The first step, before even building the interfacer, is to get the old Roomba working again. Wish me luck with that one ;).