How to Create a Doom Map of Your House Using a Roomba

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Turn your home's layout into a Doom map using a Roomba 980 and this clever hack.

Turns out that in addition to sucking up dust bunnies and dog hair, your Roomba can be used to turn your house into hell on earth. A devilishly clever hack lets you import the robot vacuum's mapping data to create a custom demon-infested level of Doom.

The name of the hack? Doomba.

Game developer Rich Whitehouse discovered that the Roomba 980 recorded fairly detailed information about the interior dimensions of his house, and, using Noesis, created a script that converts that data into a Doom level. 

Credit: Rich Whitehouse

(Image credit: Rich Whitehouse)


After downloading Noesis to your PC, the program will look for Roombas on your local network, and then record the data it collects as it goes about its business cleaning your home. You can then customize the number of weapons, enemies, and objects in the level. 

MORE: Best Robot Vacuums

Whitehouse said that he has only tested Doomba with the now-discontinued Roomba 980, but it presumably should work with the company's other advanced mapping robot vacuums, such as the Roomba i7+. 

If you don't have a robot vacuum, the Doomba script will also work with image files, according to Whitehouse. But for those who a tidy home as much as they do blowing away demons, it's a fun way to celebrate Doom's 25th anniversary.

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Mike Prospero
Mike Prospero
U.S. Editor-in-Chief, Tom's Guide

Michael A. Prospero is the U.S. Editor-in-Chief for Tom’s Guide. He oversees all evergreen content and oversees the Homes, Smart Home, and Fitness/Wearables categories for the site. In his spare time, he also tests out the latest drones, electric scooters, and smart home gadgets, such as video doorbells. Before his tenure at Tom's Guide, he was the Reviews Editor for Laptop Magazine, a reporter at Fast Company, the Times of Trenton, and, many eons back, an intern at George magazine. He received his undergraduate degree from Boston College, where he worked on the campus newspaper The Heights, and then attended the Columbia University school of Journalism. When he’s not testing out the latest running watch, electric scooter, or skiing or training for a marathon, he’s probably using the latest sous vide machine, smoker, or pizza oven, to the delight — or chagrin — of his family.