I love Roomba. It cleans our floors and it can be hacked to help teach my kids programming. Win!

Here are the setup steps that I used to get going talking to Roomba:

• Ordered a Rootooth bluetooth connection for Roomba.  I could have build one from scratch, but I am a busy mom and hacker.
• Removed the cover from Roomba to expose the ROI port (Video).
• Setup the Bluetooth adapter on my Mac
  • Start Bluetooth network assistant
  • Have the firefly adapter deteted
  • Enter the passkey: 1234
  • Click edit serial ports to see what port it assigned.  Mine was FireFly-943A-SPP.  Alternatively, you can look at /dev directory
  • Next, you need to configure the baud rate for your Roomba. I found these instructions helpful
  • Install zterm on your mac  - set the serial port to your roomba and the baud rate to the correct baud rate
  • On zterm you now should be able to echo any key you type
• Download RoombaComm java package
• Look at the README.  You will need to run makeit.sh to build and ./rxtxlib/macosx_setup.command (for Macs)
• Finally run RoombaCommTest.sh to connect up and control your Roomba!