waelchatila.com - gumstix tag

Turn your roomba into a walking google bot

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:26:00 GMT

When my latest son was born I got a little worried since he didn't look at all like me. I decided I needed a discrete device to spy on my wife while I was at work. I started hacking my roomba and made a GåågleBot (pronounced /google-bot/). GåågleBot is a "home crawler" consisting of a vacuum roomba with an on board webserver and camera. While the vacuum goes about its business, it extracts text from the images it takes. The text is later put in a database on the roomba and searchable through a web interface. This was a good pretext for my wife. I, of course, also added the ability to remote control the roomba using AJAX...for spying purposes...hehe.

I created a dedicated site for the little fellow for fun with showcase app. http://www.GaagleBot.com

This is the next version of My AJAX Lego Robot. I'm working on yet another version of my AJAX Remote Controlled thingies...stay tuned.

RXTX on Gumstix

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:10:00 GMT

Since it could be tricky to get the RXTX sources compiling properly for the gumstix platforms I thought I'd spare anyone the pain by providing my binaries.

librxtxSerial_PXA255.so (Connex / Basix)
librxtxSerial_PXA270.so (Verdex)

However, since you're here, I would advise against using java on the gum. Sure, the programs themselves are a breeze to develop, but getting jam and classpath to compile and run properly can very well take a considerable amount of time. Just think of the reason why you are reading this. Chances are you probably have troubles getting the RXTX sources to compile or run smoothly. Just do yourself a favor, write it in small fast c/c++ or something.

AJAX Remote Controlled Lego Robot

Thu, 13 Jul 2006 11:00:33 GMT

This article shows how to remote control a real world lego robot using AJAX technology.