robot. I ended up getting it with all accessories for $30. We used it for awhile, but its battery didn't last too much and it ended up being more trouble than it was worth since it will fill up in one run and took awhile to clean out to keep it running well. I'm sure the newer models are a better.
So I decided to tear it apart to get parts I could use in other projects (I really wanted the drive motors for use in
). I took many photos of the tear down. I saved all the screws, springs, small metal parts, gears, and almost all the electronics and wiring. Most the plastic went to the trash.
Tools at the ready, Roomba on its back exposed, time to start taking it apart! |
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First up, the battery pack! Although screws were holding it together, I had to pry it apart because it was also glued shut. |
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There are 3 wires coming from the battery. I believe the 3rd is a temperature sensor. |
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This is the small vacuum assembly. The Roomba has a rotating brush that kicks objects up into the hopper, but then this little vacuum is right behind the brush to pick up dust and find particles. |
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Battery removed, brush and vacuum removed, and a little cleaning. Next! |
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The front bumper and main body cover off. |
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Man it gets dirty in there! And these are not areas that you can easily get access to in normal use. All the motors are open vented so the dust gets right in them. |
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Before I continued, I did some cleaning so I could see everything and not get super dirty myself. |
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This is the rear. The motor you see operates the brush. Its an interesting setup as the motor itself can rotate. It spins the brush but if something causes to much resistance in the brush, the motor ends up rotating and pulling itself up the string, lifting the whole yellow part up, which pulls the brushes up away from the ground. This clever mechanism is how the robot automatically self adjusts on the fly to keep the brushes on the ground at just the right height and pressure. |
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The right side. On the left side of the photo, you can see a small metal 'can'. This is where you can plug in a data cable. You can update it's software through this port. I'm sure there are sites out there that show you how to hack it yourself. |
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This is the front. The large gray box is where the battery was. The black half ring that runs the entire front half of the robot is bump sensor for detecting collisions. Notice all the wires in it? It also contains 4 IR sensors pointing down. This is how it detects stairs so it knows to stop and go another way. |
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Top down look. A little hard to see, but the main circuit board with the MCU is in the middle horizontally. |
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The control buttons from the main body cover. |
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The front bumper cover had a 360 degree IR sensor on its top, and another IR object sensor on the right side. |
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Here you can see the 4 IR sensors that were in the front bumper mount. |
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The electronics board. This is the heart of the entire system. The little motor on the left is from the small spinning brush (you can see one of them sticking out right above the left end of the board) that is used to fling debris from a wall edge to in front of the brushes. |
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The main part of the brush unit removed from the main frame. |
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This is a fairly complex part. It has two full gear boxes. The one for the brush on the upper left of the photo, and a small one built into the end of the motor (the small gears near the bottom). It also has some sort of sophisticated piezo sensor that I believe was used for its dirt detection system. This feature would cause the robot to spend more time it areas it detected dirt. |
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Everything bu the rear support wheel has been removed. The two main drive units and the speaker. There are also two very small lever switches (the small blue squares) that were used for the robot to know when its drive wheels were fully retracted. I believe this was used to determine if the robot had run under the edge of something that pushed down on it. |
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The support wheel in the back was fairly complex. It was on a spring suspension system and had two lever switches for sensors. One was to detect the wheel was pushed all the way up into the robot, the other was triggered by a lobe on the shaft of the wheel. You can see the lobed nub part on the shaft of the wheel. This nub would trigger the switch once per revolution. I think this was used so the robot could tell if it lost traction like getting high centered. If the main drive wheels were spinning OK (to the computer) but this wheel was not, go chance the drive wheels were slipping or not even on the ground. |
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All the parts I decided to keep. The two main drive units, all other motors, all wires, rear wheel, all screws and gears, and the battery. |
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Another angle of the parts I kept. |
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