DIY Roomba Virtual Wall, Part 4

So I went ahead and made another Roomba Virtual Wall. Everything else is pretty much the same as before, except I made each mounting layer one single ring, instead of 2 separate pieces. The single-piece design makes them easier to align and attach, at the expense of slightly longer print time and more filament used.

When soldering the proto-board, I tried moving the 3 resistors to the bottom of the board. Bad move. It was too crowded. In the end, I moved 2 of them back to the top.

I found that the IR LED that I used for this unit is actually the one I salvaged from the broken Roomba Virtual Wall because it has a very narrow degree of projection (2 ~ 3° at most). I thought the first unit had it.

What happened was, I was testing out the IR LED from the virtual wall and the old TV remote on the breadboard, and somehow got them mixed up. So I thought the first unit was using the IR LED from the broken virtual wall, but actually it had the TV remote IR LED, which makes sense now, because it has a much wider degree of projection (~30°).

For my own usage, it doesn't really matter, so I won't be making any changes. But if the IR beam needs to be as narrow as possible, then it pays to purchase an IR LED with that characteristic.

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

Comments

Update: Line adapter for Ozito Blade Trimmer

Update (Dec 2021): If you access to a 3D printer, I would now recommend this solution , which makes it super easy to replace the trimmer line. I have been using it for a few months now with zero issue.

Cooling mod for the X96 Air

I realized after my Ugoos box died that overheating is a big problem with cheap Android TV boxes. A teardown of the Ugoos box shows that it does not have any heatsink or fan at all! The X96 Air does have a heatsink, but the heatsink is located at the bottom of the casing with no ventilation. In this default configuration, with the ambient room temperature at 25c and playing a 1080p video, I was seeing the CPU temperature at 67c. I drilled a couple of holes at the bottom of the casing. The CPU temperature fell to 59c with the box raised about 2cm with plastic blocks. I retrieved an old 5V laptop fan: Then cut and strip away a spare USB cable: Solder the red and black wires on the fan and the cable: Secure the fan to the bottom of the casing with double-sided tape, then plug the fan into the box's USB connector. Here's a view of the box with some 3D-printed risers installed at the bottom to give the mounted fan sufficient clearance: The CPU now runs at 43c, a huge drop from the ...

Installing and customizing CoreELEC in X96 Air

I previously installed CoreELEC on another TV Box ( Ugoos X3 Pro ), which unfortunately died after only 9 months during the summer (due to the unit overheating, which I learned is a common problem for cheap Android TV boxes). So this time I purchased a X96 Air (4GB/32Gb) and had to do the whole thing again. So this is a note-to-self in case I ever have to install CoreELEC again on some other device. Installation of CoreELEC is simple enough by following this guide . Basically, it involves downloading and writing the firmware to a microSD card using usbimager . Then insert the microSD card, reset the unit and hold the reset until the logo appears. The unit will then proceed to boot into CoreELEC. First thing is to connect to WiFi, then enable SSH. This allows me to login via ssh and execute: ceemmc -x from the terminal. This writes CoreELEC to the built-in eMMC storage, after which I am able to remove the microSD card and reboot the unit into CoreELEC via the built-in sto...

Random Sequence

Search This Blog