We had one years ago, but the batteries died. I could probably figure out how to replace them (Roomba doesn’t make it easy), but this might actually be a more modern unit.
[Update]
Link is correct now, sorry.
8 thoughts on “Want A Roomba?”
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Your staff is intact but your link is broken Randuman….
This topic seems very interesting to me, but your link points to an article about Elon Musk.
Cool! I plan to scale this to attach to my lawn mower.
Interestingly, robot lawn mowers are available – in the UK. I can’t find any place in the US that sells them (even though John Deere makes some).
There are already lots of kits for converting a lawn mower to a remote control, self propelled robot. Basically just get a couple of motors for an electric wheel chair off ebay. Hook the motors and a RC controller receiver to an Arduino unit. Power everything with a couple of deep cycle 12v motorcycle batteries.
These guys are available in the US:
http://www.husqvarna.com/us/products/robotic-lawn-mowers/automower-315/967623405/
Actually, they say I can buy them from 8 stores within 20 miles of my house. Who knew?
Of course, I live in a condo so I don’t mow lawns…
The measure is not how often you use your tool but the abundance of the tools you have.
You can replace the battery on the Roomba fairly easily. I have one and replaced the battery earlier this year. It took me about 15 minutes. You can get the battery for a Roomba off Amazon for just $20. Don’t bother with the official ‘Roomba’ brand battery since they just inflate the price for the luxury of putting their name on the side.
There are just a couple of screws on the bottom. You don’t even need to remove the little spinning brush thingy, it’s flexible enough to pull straight through the hole in the base plate. The battery even has a couple of straps on each side to help lift it out. The battery actually looks like they just took a bunch of 26650 Lithium Ion batteries and wrapped them together with some heavy duty plastic.
On an old one? This is like a decade ago. When I looked up how to do it at the time, it was a royal PITA, because standard-sized batteries wouldn’t quite fit.