Hey,
I'm not sure of where to put this, so if its in the wrong section, can someone move it for me?
Basically, I have two Roomba (Dont know what it is? Google Roomba) look alikes. They simply do not perform, but they WERE cheap!.
Anyway, I've pulled one apart and looked for a programming interface. Not wanting to reverse engineer anything (and not finding anything obvious to me, like the roomba's programming interface), I pulled the circuit out and discarded it.
Next I pulled out the vacuum assembly and now I have a robot-to-be, with two wheels, a bumper (need optical sensors to sense the this though, more on that later), the wall-follow sensor - which I never saw working, so I'll disregard that. And cliff sensors so it wont fall down stairs.
I have no idea if these sensors are compatible with arduino, but if none of them are, it doesn't really matter to me. At least I have a pre-constructed "shell" with wheels and enough room in it for many things (sensors, and LED's, cameras, motors, etc)!
I've always wanted a fully autonomous robot that wanders around the house doing stuff. But what? Its no good at cleaning the floor, so what else could it do? I thought it could be a security robot, because there are PIR and sonar sensors available, but I wonder what else I could make it do?
At this stage, thats the kind of ideas I'm looking for - What can I do with this robot!? Remember, I have two and will pull the second one apart if it would benefit from having two robots which work together to perform a specific task!
Now: I'm a noob to arduino, and electronics, but with a lot of perseverance, I think I will get there. What kinds of things have you done with YOUR arduino?
And another thing, how could I get it to communicate to a PC wirelessly in order for more detailed analysis of whatever it finds?