4. More Roomba: Guns and Hoovers

Tod Kurt is definitely not the only trying his hand at Roomba hacking. Youtube is full of videos from hackers across the world who’ve cracked open these dust-eaters and made them do wonderful things.

Some hackers are following in Kurt’s footsteps by working on remote controls. Like the Macbook accelerometer, a modder made a Nintendo Wii-mote control the motion of a Roomba with its tilt function. This time, pulling back sends the Roomba forward, pushing down puts it in reverse, and spinning the Wii-mote makes it turn in place.

Another hacker uses a Wii-mote to turn the Roomba back into a normal vacuum. He does this by programming the Roomba to keeping a constant distance from the Wii-mote. That way, when he moves the Wii-mote back and forth like a handle, the clever little robot slides across the floor like an old-fashion Hoover invisibly attached to the Wii-mote. Watch:

Taking a more creative route, other hackers are thinking outside the box when it comes to what a Roomba can do. This bot has been programmed to follow a set course. It’s owner has marked out a path of white tape it has to stay inside. When it reaches the tape, it senses the difference in the color of the floor and knows not to cross.

Another hacker even gave a Roomba its own Internet show. The Roomba that starred at Vacuum Cleaner Live, sadly now a defunct site, transmitted regular images from its days of house cleaning back to an online webcam visitors that could watch live.

Then there’s the crimson red Roomba, one of the most recognizable hacked Roombas for its unique appearance. Its hacker not only gave it a fancy paint job and new body frame, but also mounted it with an airsoft gun that shoots small, yellow pellets, making it the scourge of vacuums and ankles for feet around. Take a look:

One of the more famous Roomba hacks took the silent little cleaner and turned him into Frogger, the similarly circular reptile who tries to cross highways in the classic video game. While one hacker settled for letting the Frogger Roomba cross a living room — playing the game on a laptop while the Roomba followed a similar path across the carpet —another wasn’t satisfied until the poor guy had made it most of the way across an actual highway. Less daring, this hacker used hundred of LEDs to turn his Roomba into Pacman, complete with a glowing mouth that opens and closes as it moves. Just turn off the lights and you can watch him eat his way across the floor, chomping up dust the way Pacman chomps pellets.