Build a Robot That Will Clean Your House HowTo: Build a Robot That Will Clean Your House Cheaper (and perhaps cuter) than a maid, the simple scrub bot is easy and cheap to make:"This state of the art cleaning robot is great at polishing floors and shining glass tables (provided that you soap it up first). It also disperses small particulates evenly across your floor in such a manner that your home may look cleaner than it actually is." See it in action below; click through for detailed instructions on how to do-it-yourself. Previously, HowTo: Build Your Own Dancing Robot in Ten Minutes.Today we like to share with you regarding maintaining and upkeep your robotic vacuum cleaner in general, not just MyGenie. The main reason why you want to purchase a robotic vacuum cleaner is helping you do vacuuming housework automatically. Most of you are busy people who do not have time to do vacuuming at home, so a robotic vacuum cleaner would save you a lot of time do vacuuming chore.

We like to remind you gently that although the robot is capable to vacuum your home or office, but it’s not design to do self-maintain as compare to the “Terminator” in the movies it can do even self repair. Most robotic vacuum cleaners operate by mean of electro-mechanical and rotating parts. Here are some areas that we think will help any robotic vacuum cleaners perform better and last longer in their service if the owner will take care to regularly maintain their own cleaner: 1) Remove and clear hair, rubber bands, strings or other foreign items entangle on the main brush or gum brush, wheels and side brushes. The main cause of the problem why most robot cleaner is not operating is mainly due to hair, strings that caught and entangle the rotating parts of the cleaner that stop it from moving. All robot cleaners are designed using wheels and brush that are in circular motion to do the vacuuming work. Thus, do regular check and ensuring that the robot main brushes, wheels and side brushes are free from hairs and foreign item that entangled on the cleaner.

2) Clear the dustbin regularly. As the size of the dustbin of most robotic vacuum cleaner are generally much smaller than a regular vacuum cleaner. Best practise is to clear the dustbin before every time it vacuums. **Please see our instruction manual on “How to disassemble and assemble the dustbin” for MyGenie clients. 3) Clean the HEPA filter regularly (For MyGenie only). This is more of health and hygiene purposes. HEPA filter is located in the dustbin area. The main purpose of HEPA is to trap dust particles as small as 0.3 mircometer. We have special tool like the “Dust Brush” to clean the HEPA filter. IMPORTANT: HEPA Filter is not to be wash with water, it has to use a brush. For those MyGenie owner, you will have 2 Hepa filters when you purchase from us. We have wrote a blog post regarding “How long to charge MyGenie“, but today we like to share with you more. What happens when you keep using the direct charging onto the robotic cleaner (using adapter) the common problem is forgetting to switch-off when the battery is fully charged.

Answer: This will make the battery life shorter. Some robotic vacuum cleaner model do not come with a automatic charging station, then when charging the battery direct from the power adaptor please ensure you observe the stated charging time for your cleaner model.shark vacuum cleaner spare parts 5) Front and bottom Sensors.hoover water filtration vacuum cleaner Most robotic vacuum cleaner will have both front and bottom sensors , acting as eyes. hoover upright vacuum cleaner attachmentsThese sensors designed to detect impact on the front and to detect edge from falling. When the robot cleaner is stuck underneath a bed or sofa and not able to get out on it’s own. : Please do not pull the cleaner directly because you may break/damage the bumper and sensors or other parts of the cleaner body.

If stuck underneath you have to lift up the main item and slowly re-track out the robot cleaner. We hope this article will help you in maintaining and thus use your robotic vacuum cleaner in good order and condition that last longer. If you find this article useful, please share with your friends, and if you have more questions in maintaining robotic vacuum cleaner, use the comment below to communicate with us.There are two very clear signs that I'm getting old. The first is that I bought a domestic robot to help me with the chores. The second is that, rather than spending my evenings and weekends reading decades old forum postings, reverse engineering serial interfaces, and soldering components together - I plunked €99 on a bit of kit which "just works". Enter the Thinking Cleaner - it's a replacement faceplate for Roombas which adds WiFi and a sweet hackable API. This post looks at how the unit performs - its good points and its flaws - and how the API works. Let's take a step back.

The Roomba 620 is iRobot's entry level vacuum cleaning robot. Unlike the more expensive models, the 620 doesn't have any scheduling - you have to manually set the Roomba to clean. The Thinking Cleaner is a cheap way of adding a brain and extra connectivity to an otherwise simple robot. A few days after ordering, the package arrived from the Netherlands. The instructions say that you should carefully remove the cover from the Roomba. To be honest, I was a little nervous about this. The plastic feels fragile and tightly clipped on. That said, it pealed off easily without breaking. The whole process really was as quick as this video demonstrates : The replacement cover is delightful gunmetal grey - I think it looks better than the white original. Although the WiFi unit protrudes from the surface, it doesn't seem any taller than the Roomba's sensor. Incidentally, flipping the cover over reveals the WiFi unit. I may be wrong, but the casing looks 3D printed. The cover also has a sticker with the MAC address on it.

Clipping the new cover on took seconds. Resulting in a little flashing LED on the unit. Ok, here's where things went a little awry. The Thinking Cleaner needs to connect to a WiFi network. To set this up, you need to connect to the Roomba via an app. When I initially installed it, the Android App didn't yet work on Lollipop. I had to dig out an old Android tablet to get it connected. Literally two hours afterwards the Android app updated - whereupon it worked flawlessly with Lollipop! The unit only works on 2.4GHz WiFi - not a huge problem. If you're in the US, the unit won't work on channels 12 and 13. The App is simple enough to use - allowing you to set the Roomba cleaning, drive it yourself, set up a schedule, and get alerts from the cleaner. It will also send you notifications when something interesting happens to your robot. The app doesn't tell you the IP address which the Roomba is using. This is an annoying oversight. You'll need to pop on to your WiFi router and see what it has been assigned.

There is a basic web interface but there is no security available - not even a username and password. Any one who has access to your your WiFi network will also have full access to your Roomba. Make sure that when any friends come round, you give them access to a guest WiFi network - and try to make sure that your WiFi and LAN are as secure as possible. There is currently no way to set a user name and password. The web interface is basically fine - it doesn't look brilliant, and the colours are a bit intense - but it allows you to control the Roomba and set up scheduling. It also works well on mobile web browsers : That's pretty handy if you're inside your house - but what if you want to get notifications or control it while you are away? In order to access your device when about and about, you need to sign up for a free ThinkingSync. That's a safer and easier option than teaching users how to set up Port Forwarding and getting them to punch holes in their firewalls - they have a detailed privacy page which explains their reasoning.

To connect to your Thinking Cleaner when you are not at home without modifying your home network settings, you need a (free) account on Thinkingsync server. Thinking Cleaner will periodically contact the server and check for updates. Maximum delay is approximately 1 minute. You can log in or sign up here. For push notifications on your smartphone you need an account. Without an account you can only use the app when your are connected to the same wifi network as your Thinking Cleaner. Firmware updates are only possible when logged in to your account. There are two main problems I have with this : I think it's time to put my Roomba on it's own VLAN! There is only one account available per Roomba. I guess this makes sense - although I'm not quite sure if I can have cleaning alerts sent to my phone, while my wife's phone only gets low battery alerts. If you're out of the house, the app doesn't seem to be able to access the remote driving, nor the scheduling.

You don't want to be driving blind. If you don't fancy getting your hands dirty Thinking Cleaner have some pre-built API integrations - allowing you to connect your Roomba to a variety of existing home automation services and the Pebble smart watch! For those of us who like to fiddle, there's a (mostly) REST API with comprehensive documentation. This spits back JSON so should be fairly easy to work with. Once again, there's no authentication - so anyone with access to your network can force your Roomba to commit suicide. The API allows you to take manual control of your Roomba, driving it wherever you like. You can alter its schedules and access some basic information about the unit. Sadly, there's no way yet to get the Roomba to tell you what it is doing. In order to find out whether it has started cleaning, you would need to continually poll the API and notice when it changes state. I would like it if the unit were to make an HTTP call to a server of my choosing - then I could, say, get it to tweet when it finished cleaning.

Incidentally, a quick nmap shows that only port 80 is open. I've been a little harsh on the unit. For €99 it's an exceptionally good bit of kit. There are still a few bugs and kinks to work out, but for day-to-day usage it is excellent. Here's what I'd like to see in future versions of the software.It appears that their servers do support secure connections, but it doesn't seem to be mandated. I'd be much happier if all the communications went over a secure channel.Yes, even HTTP Basic Digest would be nice. Just something to prevent people on the network fiddling where they shouldn't! If you have a kids in your house, you don't want them playing with the robot's settings.Let me define an HTTP request for the Roomba to make when it has finished cleaning.I'd love to be able to tinker with the look and feel of the website. At the moment they say The firmware running inside the Thinking Cleaner module is not going to be open source. This is because the module has to be certified and certification includes the firmware.

I can understand that the radio module has to obey local laws. I just wish there were a way to separate the radio logic from the web server. Perhaps the code could be made open source but have the unit only accept signed versions from the manufacturer? Play sounds or voices. At the moment, the software only lets the Roomba play one "jingle". It would be great if it were possible to make it play different sounds - or even get it to speak some of its stock phrases.This is one I think I can build myself! It would be great to be able to draw a map of the route taken by the Roomba on its travels.Adding WiFi signal strength, for example, would make for an easy way to map your network propagation.I guess I'll have to build that myself as well! The Thinking Cleaner upgrades even the cheapest Roomba into a WiFi connected, super cleaner. I love the fact that I can get schedule cleaning while I'm away, and play with an API. There are some minor issues, which I'm sure will be fixed as the software matures.