Boomba Is the Ultimate Evolution of a Roomba
We don’t see modified Roombas much these days, which is why it was fun to watch Lucas turn one into Boomba.
20 years ago, Roombas were the only robots people were likely to encounter in day-to-day life and they were pretty darn affordable — especially on the used market. As such, they became very popular in the DIY robotics scene as accessible platforms to build upon. Roomba even released official models, sans vacuum cleaner unit, to accommodate that niche. But we don’t see modified Roombas much these days, which is why it was fun to watch Lucas turn one into Boomba.
Boomba is an old-school build like we would have seen a couple of decades ago, but done with modern hardware. Lucas used a four-year-old Roomba as a starting point, because his parents were tossing it out. However, almost nothing of that original Roomba remains in the current Boomba. Lucas gutted the Roomba and stripped most of the components, leaving just the bottom of the frame and the two motors.
With just a pair of motors on a frame, Lucad has to add a lot of components just to get Boomba moving. Those include a DIY battery pack made of 18650 battery cells with a BMS board, an Arduino UNO R4 WiFi development board, and an H-bridge to drive the motors. With some additional hardware to deal with voltage levels and circuit protection, that was enough to get Boomba moving under its own power.
From there, Lucas piled on more components. He added a custom aluminum cap to the top of the frame and that has several mounting points, allowing him to expand Boomba’s capability. He added ultrasonic sensors for collision avoidance, MOSFETs controlling power to superbright LED headlights, an OLED screen for basic status information, and a MCP23017 GPIO expander to increase the number of components that the Arduino can talk to.
Now, Boomba is ready for its life as a robotics experimentation platform. Lucas will be able to add more hardware over time, while bringing the tradition of modifying Roombas to a new generation.