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Talking to Your Roomba via Bluetooth and RoombaComm

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!

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