The Mac – Roomba Interface

News Posted 11/12/2006
Author: PV5150
Source: Hacking Roomba

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Just for giggles, some bright spark came up with the idea that you could use the built-in tilt sensors of the MacBook to control a Roomba.

Apple MacBooks have integrated 3-axis accelerometer called the Sudden Motion Sensor (SMS, previously Apple Motion Sensor, AMS). Normally this is used to detect when the laptop is dropped so it can shut down the hard drive to prevent damage. But the SMS can be accessed programmatically and used to measure tilt.

You only need two bits of software not already on your Mac:
– AMSTracker
– roomba-tilt.pl

Download them both, put them both in your PATH and try it out. But you may want to familiarise yourself with how it works first

Click the link to view the vid

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