Roombox - Node Knockout 2013

A few weeks ago I participated in Node Knockout 2013 (NKO4), a 48-hour hackathon with 385 teams competing for the top spot in 7 categories (team, solo, innovation, design, utility/fun, completeness, and popularity).

And here’s a video of what I hacked: Roombox, a Roomba vacuum cleaner turned into a boombox using node.js . This demo shows the Roomba playing Rocky theme, Beverly Hills Cop theme, Hey Jude (The Beatles), Scar Tissue (Red Hot Chilli Peppers), Super Mario Bros. theme, and Airwolf theme.

Note: I put the wrong year for The Beatles’ Hey Jude in the video. I wanted to fix it, but it was already 1 am back then and I had to go to work in the morning. Sorry Beatles fans!

The result? Roombox finished 9th in innovation category, and 14th in solo category. Not bad for an idea that I improvised on the D-day itself. If there’s a solo innovation category, Roombox would’ve finished 1st on that inexistent leaderboard :).

Comments from some judges and fellow contestants:

Cool hack! I'm also amused by the rickroll fail :)
Hah now I need to get a Roomba. Great hardware project / hack.
This got innovation points for me as it never would have occurred to me to do this. Made me laugh and share with others.
Most out-of-the-world idea on NKO :D
Completely useless but very innovative!
I would have given you 5 stars on innovation, but I once heard a hard drive play Darth Vader's theme song so there is a precedent.

How does Roombox work? To put it simply, Roombox parses abc notation sheets, maps the music notes to fit Roomba notes range, splits each song into 4 segments where each segment would be registered to a Roomba slot, then finally the Roomba is instructed to play the song. Most of the development effort was spent on finding a suitable music format, and on testing the music sheets because in reality only few songs would sound decent on a vacuum cleaner.

Here’s a sketch I scribbled after deciding on how I would hack Roombox:

Huge thanks to Mike Harsch for writing mharsch/node-roomba, and Sergi Mansilla for writing sergi/abcnode. And an apology to my wife and brother for suffering through the weekend listening to dozens of horrible songs being tested :p.

Update (08/12/2013):

DBrain told me about DJ Roomba from Parks and Recreation. If iRobot ever upgraded Roomba’s sound system, Roombox code would be totally useful to achieve ‘music player on a moving vacuum cleaner’ a la DJ Roomba.

Share Comments
comments powered by Disqus