RoombaWii
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RoombaWii: pretty flippin' awesome?
We'd take a Wii-controlled RC car over a similarly modded Roomba any day, but hey, we can respect those meticulously clean persons who would value a lively vacuuming sesh. Take one part Roomba control software (courtesy of Tod Kurt), and one part DarwinRemote, add a dash of Chris Hughes' new script, and voilà, you've just harnessed the power of a domestic robot vacuum. Pretty flippin' awesome dude! Totally.[Via Engadget]
RoombaWii: you know where this is headed
People have come up with numerous ways to control their Roombas -- USB, Bluetooth, MacBook tilt sensors, and even a MIDI keyboard -- and now that the Wiimote has been hacked to operate several non-Wii devices -- computers, home automation systems, and even an RC truck -- it's no surprise that some clever modder would make these two great tastes taste great together. And sure enough, a gentleman named Chris Hughes has just completed a script that merges Tod Kurt's Roomba control software with the recently released DarwinRemote, resulting in a little slavebot that scoots around using just a flick of your wrist. As you might expect, tilting the Wiimote forward and backward causes Roomba to move in those directions, while tilting it side to side sends the vacuum spinning either clockwise or counter-clockwise. There's a slight delay between manipulating the Wiimote and Roomba actually executing a command, though luckily Chris has kindly provided his RoombaWii script for download, so perhaps you can play around with it and reduce some of that latency. You can check out a short vid of his setup after the break, but if the term "flippin' awesome" is considered a little too racy for your office, you may have to file this one under NSFW....
