Roomba charge dock, safe to use?
rwgast_logicdesign
Posts: 1,464
So i ended up coming across an older Roomba Discovery yesterday along with a quick charger, a docking station a 2 virtual wall beacons for $10. The roomba works fine just has a bad battery that only lasts 10-15 mins.
While looking at batterys i found out the roomba uses a a 16 cell 3000maH nimh battery. Well it so happens my robot is using a 16 cell 2450maH nimh system! I was wondering if it would be safe to use the roombas dock to charge my robot? The charger says it puts out 22v and 1.25amps. The docking station only reads 5v when theres no load on it. Im not sure how a roomba charges if it reads voltage or just uses a timer or what... i was hoping someone could shed a bit of light on this
While looking at batterys i found out the roomba uses a a 16 cell 3000maH nimh battery. Well it so happens my robot is using a 16 cell 2450maH nimh system! I was wondering if it would be safe to use the roombas dock to charge my robot? The charger says it puts out 22v and 1.25amps. The docking station only reads 5v when theres no load on it. Im not sure how a roomba charges if it reads voltage or just uses a timer or what... i was hoping someone could shed a bit of light on this
Comments
I don't think the charge base is actually a charger. You can unplug the power cord form the charge base and plug it directly into the Roomba and it charges just the same. So I think you would still need a charger between the charge base and your battery.
Roombas have numerous other problems. I have 3 dead Discovery models (top of the line) which I have grown tired of repairing. Now they sit and gather dust more slowly
ereco this is really disharting to hear, basically your telling me the charge brick is a pile of junk? i was really hoping to get some use out of the base, beacons, and roomba chasis.
I too have a dock and While I have not popped its top to look I doubt much is in there . as it is really just a passive as faras I know device ,. ( this is aside from the Active IR stuff to Home on in on it )
The user and technical manuals are available on the web along with a number of forums. Apart from batteries our Discovery was quite reliable up till about year 4. Then I had to deal with dust in sensors (you'd think a robot designed to work with dust would use magnets and hall effect sensors rather than optical sensors), the roomba spin of death (optical taco in the wheel assembly), cog sets (the nylon square sockets for the brushes would wear out when the robot ate coins and other small objects) and then a logic board failure (over current condition after 5 minutes, I might have been able to fix it at component level if I had a test jig, but it was easier to change the board). Overall quite a reliable unit for how we used it.
Overall it had great WAF (Wife Approval Factor), it did a better job at cleaning (we had 2 dogs, and a cat), and most of all apart from preparing the area we didn't have to do the work. We found for best results you had to pick up things that the robot would choke on (coins, cables, etc).
We eventually retired ours due to the unreliability (it spent more and more time on my work bench). We have a newer model, it's got smarter logic to deal with cables, it's quieter but doesn't clean as well.
There is a guy in eBay who sells most of the parts.
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?136102-Roombas-Revenge&highlight=Roombas+revenge
The Motors are easy to salvage, just clean them up and they are good to go.
-Tommy
im propbably just going to reuse the roomba parts, my dog isnt fond of robots/rc gear and destroys vacums... needless to say she hates this thing lol. im really curious about the roomba ir protocal but havent found any documentation. I mean the virtual walls save me from building beacons and the docking stations perfect, almost exactly what i wanted to build. Any of you guys know if there is info on the roombas ir stuff out there?