🆕DIY Arduino Project- Roomba Virtual Wall 👍

[@Usuaurio-kj1ym]

Hello, I have a roomba e5, I made the virtual wall but it does not recognize it, i tried the infrared LED with the cell phone camera and it works ok

[@superviro]

I'd add a blinder on the front to direct the light straight out across the door threshold so that the Roomba can get closer, but still not cross the line.

[@RichEddings]

Thanks for putting this together! If you are having issues, try switching your library version of IRremote to a 2.x.x version. I could not make a Nano or an Uno work until I downgraded to 2.8.1 due to some of the design changes in IRremote 3.x.

[@pkarza]

Thank you for the help with the IR remote library! I thought I had done something wrong...

[@RichEddings]

@@pkarza You’re welcome! I was pulling my hair out until I read the 3.x release notes and realized that was probably the issue. I thought I’d save others the same headache.

[@stevesplace7230]

I too was pulling my hair out! Problem solved. Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

[@ogblaz1]

I wasted so much time, Thank you Rich!

[@JensenVlogChannel]

Thank you somuch for the support

[@luizantoniosantos4208]

You solved a big problem that I was having, for not being able to acquire the virtual wall. In addition, the cost was ten times lower (U$ 400 to U$ 40) for five virtual walls. Thank you very much for publishing this video and making the libraries available. Luiz Antonio, from Brazil.

[@MkmeOrg]

Welcome. They work pretty great for a few bucks in parts :)

[@nccyr1]

I don't have a Roomba but I think it's a great project and it's even better that you open source the software and hardware for others to benefit from this device. Great work!

[@ryanp0617]

I tested this out with an Arduino Uno, but in order for it to work, I had to wire it from pin 3 to ground, not from pin 3 to 5v. Is there something different about the nano? Great project, and thanks for all your videos!

[@ramiroc6553]

SOLUTION FOR ROOMBA 675. Thanks the information in this chat I was able to figure out why my Roomba 675 didn't work with the original Instructions from MKme Lab. I am using Arduino One, which is not different than Nano for this application. 1) Resistor must be properly sized: The IR led has an operational voltage and amperage range that it is necessary to meet to ensure proper performance. Based on my IR led data sheet, the operational forward voltage range is 1.2v - 1.3v @ 100 ma. If the voltage source (arduino board) is 5v, you would need to add a resistance = (5v - 1.2v)/0.1A) = 38 ohm. However, I used 50 ohm. resistor to protect the IR led. If the resistor is too high (80 ohm) , the IR led won't glow. If the resistor is lower than 38 ohm. the IR led will burn out. 2) Arduino code: I used the same code suggested by Mkme Lab with the following changes: irsend.mark(500) instead of irsend.mark(1000) and irsend.space(7500) instead of irsend.space(1000) The virtual wall for my Roomba 675 is working great! Thanks MKme Lab for posting this youtube video.

[@ecto1a2003]

thank you soo much

[@superspit]

Bit old now, but did you get better battery life from changing those 2 parmtrs? (mark and space). Cheers.

[@enzomiceli1984]

Anyone with the I Series, use 500 for mark and 7500 for space. Lots of testing paid off!

[@mikeg5250]

Thank you very much. It wasn't working with 1000 each for mark and space for my I3. irsend.mark(500); and irsend.space(7500); worked great!

[@wakeuplearn]

@@mikeg5250 Excellent. I will try those settings with my i3. the 1000's didn't work that well for me either.

[@alexwebber1790]

Excellent! Finally got this working with 500 and 7500 on the i7.

[@crippl3dhobnob]

Excellent work!

[@velpero1861]

Excellent thanks! I'm moving to a bigger apartment and wanted to do just this to prevent it from going to a certain room. I'm thinking of adding a switch to the box so if I have a messy (things on the floor) room I can click this thing on and when I have cleared the room then I turn this off. And 2.0 would adding them to home automation system so it could be done remotely.

[@Danunkown]

i wonder how many Ir leds can you use on one board

[@takeAparterAndPutTogetherer]

Just built this virtual wall for a Roomba 655. Works great! I'm using IRremote 3.9.0. To get it to work, I took the library's examples/SendDemo sketch and its PinDefinitionsAndMore.h file, copied the basics of setup(), and then in its loop() I called IrSender.mark and IrSender.space as in the original MKme code. For the Roomba 655, that meant using the 1000 timings for each call.

[@ethereal_emily]

Omg this is awesome, just got a robotic vacuum recently and was considering buying baby gates to stop them from going into certain hallways etc. It is an off brand roomba though, I wonder if this trick will still work... Worth a shot!

[@MkmeOrg]

Yep they might use the same protocol.

[@tontzah1383]

Just what i needed thaks so much 😍

[@Badg0r]

I've bought a virtual wall and it's too high for the location that I've bought it for. I've a few esp8266's laying around. Can you adjust the range of the LED like adjust the brightness so the Roomba only avoids a small place? It got stuck below our oven several times and got scratched really badly (a learning proces). But there's a small path going into our kitchen. So I'll have to adjust the settings.

[@MCsCreations]

Really neat job, dude. Really nice! 😃

[@Hugatry]

Bright (IR) light scares Roomba? One should avoid getting Roomba wet? As a precaution, I suggest you to NOT feed it after midnight.

[@MkmeOrg]

Arduino time! Buy a kit here! store.mkme.org/?product=diy-roomba-virtual-wall-kit Parts: Arduino NANO amzn.to/2EaMzZI IR LED amzn.to/2QOqUgE Resistor amzn.to/2EhIbsf Enjoy!

[@o_srg]

Thanks a lot for the video! I have a question: Can I use normal 3x AAA batteries? How long it will survive with this code running?

[@NGinuity]

I looked at your code and from the look of it you're blinking the IR LED in 1 second intervals with mark(1000) and space(1000). I thought that Virtual Walls were 1ms on and 1ms off? At first I was wondering why you were leveraging a IR library to do that and then I read the supporting site and figured out the pulses have to be on a 38kHz carrier....so including the Arduino makes total sense to me now. Are you planning to implement a IR receiver to control these at some point? I think it would be cool to have one of these, or a set, IoT enabled but that would be a challenge to drive that carrier off of a ESP8266 device. Not a deal breaker though...I'd just have to turn on/off the pulse segments on the ESP8266 and generate the carrier with something like a 555 Timer or PNP push-pull driver. They implement that on the dev board but I'm not entirely sure if this is the method it uses. I'm hoping this was a proof of concept for something more....if so I look forward to you building on it!

[@hugovangalen]

Look better :-) The units for the `mark()` and `space()` routines in `irSend.cpp` are in fact usec (microseconds) -- not milliseconds. As 1000 microseconds is 1 millisecond, there is nothing wrong with the timing.

[@gravelbar]

I was surprised to see NOTHING in the video about how the IR beam actually worked, thanks!

[@benfosque6820]

​​​@@gravelbarRight? I was watching the video on 2x speed just trying to find where he said the pulse pattern. I wonder if the timing has to be hyper-accurate? If not, seems simpler to do this with two 555s, an AND gate and a transistor. Costs about $2 instead of $25 for the Arduino. If the number of pulses per cycle needs to be exact, you can replace the second 555 with an 8-bit counter and a 2 more ANDs from the same quad chip.

[@rm62rocket]

Does the roomba only work with 940nm infrared LEDs? Thinking of trying an infrared laser diode but can only find them in the 780-808nm range. Hoping it's more sensitive to the frequency of the light.

[@NicholasHorvath]

I have a roomba 960. These work great. When using USB to power the virtual walls I find that the beam is quite effective, even past the 10' that MKme estimates the range. My only gripe is using the unregulated voltage pins and 9v batteries seemed to drain the battery rather quickly and never lasted more than a couple days. Interestingly when using USB battery packs and the nanos mini-usb port I found that my USB battery packs shut off after a couple of minutes automatically because the current draw is so low. Anyone else having these issues?

[@FabioLimaC]

This is great. Thanks a lot. How are you powering the Arduíno? If I use batteries, any ideia of how long they would last?

[@NicholasHorvath]

I tried using a 9v battery to power mine using pins 29 & 30. Went dead within a couple of days. I'm using " ELEGOO Nano Board CH340/ATmega+328P" from the Amazon link. This has happened with all 3 that I built (also using the above listed IR LED) using 220 ohm 1W resistor and 1/8W 220s. I'm thinking the onboard voltage regulator is junk. Unfortunately I have restored to USB and wall-wort power supplies. Oddly enough none of my USB battery packs work with the devices, they shut off after a few minutes. I'm guessing the power draw is so little that the battery packs (an anker and a couple other no-names I got at various conventions and trade shows) builtin protection shuts them off. I realize your comment is a year old and I'm curious if anyones had better luck with batteries than I did

[@pkarza]

You should post which correct IR remote library is needed.

[@MkmeOrg]

Dunno how much easier I can make it when the entire library is also included in the repo.

[@gersonfer]

Awesome ! . I'll try the same using a D1 mini. Thanks .

[@marcofrancescato9021]

Hello, I'm also trying with D1 mini and control it with Blynk..did you succeed?

[@patrickstel2279]

@@marcofrancescato9021 I also tried it with the D1 but I never seemed to get it to work, I tried it with this library. github.com/crankyoldgit/IRremoteESP8266 maybe it will help you

[@luisdantevazquezsantoyo8830]

Hello, this doesn't work on the roomba e5 model any help?

[@hugovangalen]

The originals, although in a nice case, are way overpriced. Thanks for sharing and saving me an exorbitant amount of cash on virtual walls!

[@DaveCampbellKY]

i have a roomba e6, and a CircuitPlaygroundExpress device. the CPx device has an IR transmitter on it, but i was unable to understand how to use the pulseio object from the board python module to get the basic mark and space to work. any advice? is there a basic C programming environment i can use for the CircuitPlayground Express, and just use your code? does the roomba e6 model respond to your code? i don't see it mentioned anywhere. thanks.

[@magiccitymakerspace]

Quick question - are you able to see an IR pulse (even weakly?) in the LED when powering it on? Was troubleshooting based on if I can see anything in a camera, but not sure if this is valid.

[@magiccitymakerspace]

Nevermind. This is answered in the affirmative in another question.

[@michaelflaherty69]

Does anyone have info on how it differentiates a home dock from a wall? I have a dock that the Roombas cant seem to see. It still charges though. I wanted to just piggyback an arduino in there and just bypass it. When cleaning, they are treated as a curved barrier. when its seeking "home" it locates it with IR and lines up the charging pads. The original board has 2 LEDs reflected up.

[@shaun900]

I know this isn't really a support section however is anyone aware if this will work with the a new Roomba i3? I made this circuit, checked with my cell phone & it's outputting IR light but the roomba just ignores it.. Update: Broke out the scope - verified 38khz carrier & 1ms on/1ms off

[@enzomiceli1984]

were you able to get this working?

[@slli9052]

can this circuit be use on other robot vacuum cleaner, please advise thanks

[@alexwebber1790]

Hi, I created a pull request to update the code for "i" roomba models. The mark and space values are different.

[@JensenVlogChannel]

I connect and upload code, but can see the light of IR LED (Via camera on phone), can you tell me know why?

[@michaelflaherty69]

I couldn't see it with mine either. it worked though. its probably to the with wavelength. it may be beyond the spectrum the camera can detect.

[@RicardoSuarez-xu7bu]

Hello, I bought a kit, I put it together according to the instructions and it doesn't work for me,

[@MkmeOrg]

Triple check your connections and reverse the LED if nothing found. Most common issue is the LED is backwards.

[@RMPPOD1]

I tried the “DIY Arduino Project- Roomba Virtual Wall” project with a model 671 Roomba dual mode without success. The suggested parts were ordered from Amazon and wired on a project board. After powering up the circuit, the Arduino NANO was loaded with the suggested software without any problems. The circuit seemed to be working as verified by looking at the IR LED through my cell phone camera and observing the violet color being emitted by the LED. I positioned the project board with the LED pointing at the same level as the roomba at the entrance of an adjacent room. The roomba passed the led without even slowing down. With what Roomba models does this project work? Is there any difference between models as to frequency of operation or pulse width? Is there anything else I can try while I’m at the bread board stage? Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks ......;. RMPPOD

[@MkmeOrg]

It is a 671 shown in this video. I have 2 of them- they are confirmed just fine. Roomba uses the same IR protocol for all models with IR. It is right in the docs I supplied with the code- they made all their protocols available for makers.

[@skibinskimariusz]

Hi, where I can find stl file for cover ?

[@bryantsanchez7880]

Would love to see how to make a roomba wifi and turn it on with your phone. Also set times for when to come on.

[@MkmeOrg]

Most have that built in

[@bryantsanchez7880]

@@MkmeOrg I have one that doesnt have it so I wanted to see if you could make one.

[@patrickstel2279]

@@bryantsanchez7880 github.com/thehookup/MQTT-Roomba-ESP01

[@robd12000]

I recently got a Roomba i3 and made one of these virt walls but the roomba ignores it. I even tried changing the resistor to make the IR led brighter and also dimmer. Loaded the IRremote library again and messed with the ms on/off but no luck. Any suggestions?

[@enzomiceli1984]

I am having the same issue with my i3. I was able to see the IR light up through my computer web cam, but it won't stop the i3 from going where it wants to. Any one have luck getting this to work?

[@alexwebber1790]

As someone said above you need to use different values for mark and space. Use mark(500) and space(7500). This works on my i7 perfectly.

[@jf-rr3gz]

@@enzomiceli1984 See Rich and Ramiro above. This is the kind of information that should be presented in the video. For the i3 I've downgraded to library 2.8.1, adjusted the resistor to 100ohm based on my IR LED (1.2v forward, and 50ma). I've also changed the timing to mark 500, space 7500. Seems to be working now. Before downgrade to 2.8.1 I could not detect any IR with phone camera. I've also used alternative wiring... D3 -> resistor -> positive on LED -> back to GND (not 5v!). (On an old NANO)

[@aguila913]

Hi Mr MKme, I tried the code you posted in the Arduino IDE software and do the verify function and it didn’t work ! . This make me go to Arduino programming to learn more about this, my question is, this code really is the one or there is another that you keep in secret ?

[@aguila913]

Hi Mr MKme, I could made the code uploaded to my arduino Nano, the problem is the missing IRremote library in my IDE software, I have to found the Zip file using google and added to mine IDE and its work OK!.

[@MkmeOrg]

Good stuff

[@robloughrey]

@@aguila913 I had a similar problem. I know the scope of this video isn't using an arduino so I think he gets a pass , but if you're a noob like me I recommend watching a video on flashing a nano with a library

[@ivanitzel1901]

Do I need to download anything to the arduino? I bought your kit and solder everything as describe but doesn't seem to be working.

[@MkmeOrg]

Likely wrong terminal, diode inverse or some connection issue. The Arduino is pre-programmed for you. Stop by the Discord and post in the Roomba channel and we can get it figured out no probs. mkme.org/discord Post some clear pics or your soldering and connections to save some time.

[@jirisulovsky4725]

@@MkmeOrg Btw, for me it was inverse diode. Thanks for hints!

[@andrewhannay]

Looking at the code it looks like it repeatably turns the led on for 1 second then off for 1 second. Is that it?

[@MkmeOrg]

No. 1 second on 38Khz one second off

[@andrewhannay]

Ah ha, I see. Modulated. Thanks.

[@Danunkown]

can i use a arduino micro in place of nano

[@Danunkown]

its working!

[@Usuaurio-kj1ym]

I use attiny 85 , works great!

[@genxweb]

Been building projects with arduinos for years. So I tried this based on your purchase links below yet it does not work.

[@MkmeOrg]

Not sure what you want me to say here- Try harder?

[@genxweb]

MKme Lab a good reply would be. It works on xyz roomba and not xyz model. If you did this in September and it worked it should work on all models. Is there anything missing in the video or github? My wiring lines up with yours and the code was copy and paste. I sit it on the floor and she goes right pass it or runs it over. Any more details or elaboration in the video on the github would be appreciated. Has anyone else tried?

[@MkmeOrg]

@@genxweb The IR protocol is universal. The Roomba docs are in my GitHub. They made their protocol open for the world. So I would say- recheck your build. Check to see if your IR LED is lighting up (use any digital camera close enough it will show a glow if working). Check your polarity. Check your code is running. From there....recheck.

[@ChrisHolst]

@@MkmeOrg In Roombaland there are two standards for these things. You can buy the "lighthouse" model directly from iRobot, and it won't work for the models that are set to work with the "dual mode" models. It looks like you've expertly replicated the "dual mode" type here... which won't work for people who need "lighthouse". Thanks for covering those of us who have Roombas that talk dual... I'm ordering parts...

[@AaronDeLanty]

I built this but no luck, my Roomba just plows through it :( I was going to convert it to an ATtiny85 then I tried with a UNO and no luck. Any ideas?

[@MkmeOrg]

Verify the LED is working, reverse the polarity of the LED if you have it reversed.

[@AaronDeLanty]

@@MkmeOrg Thanks for the reply :). I have the polarity correct. Viewed it through my camera. I actually got it to work with the UNO (i didn't change anything). Could the ATtiny85 16mhz clock not be fast enough for the 38mhz IR pulse it sends at?

[@ronm6585]

Thanks

[@abboberg987]

I like the idea. But the way you solder, glue everything together and - like you are saying yourself - putting lose wires in the box and spilling tin it is definitly not a good example how to make small elektronica boxes. Try to do it nice and good.

[@MkmeOrg]

LOL why dont you do it and post a video then versus complaining someone doing FREE videos and FREE code is not up to YOUR standards.... I'll never understand people like you but feel free to carry on.

[@ahostn]

Now it’s time to make a diy roomba. For the 10% of the cost I guess.

[@MkmeOrg]

Vacuum all the thingz!

[@ArnaudMEURET]

Good luck with that! Have you ever opened up a genuine Roomba? These things are full of great pieces of engineering giving them an outstanding robustness. Nothing us DIYers can come close to or when you eventually get to the same level of reliability, your « Roombyself » will be the size of golf cart.

[@erik8362]

Great project, but the video is way too long. Could have been cut down to 2,5 min with a new voice over.

[@MkmeOrg]

wow...