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Space saving robot vacuum cleaner garage

Automatic control of the kitchen skirting board. Lifts up to 1 kg, zero power consumption on standby.

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The robot controlls it all! 100% automation, no manual interactions, invisible installation.

The robot leaves the charging station and operates a mechanical switch that turns on the power. The software opens the door immediately, waits 30 sec to give the robot enough time to leave the garage and then closes the door.

On return it sends an event to the manufactor's server. The software listens to this event, sets the garage into homecoming mode, opens the door and waits for the robot to arrive. A thin force sensing resistor, placed a few centimeteres in front of the charging station, notices when the robot overruns it. That gives the signal to close the garage door right before the power is switched off again.

If the robot didn't return within 5 minutes it is assumed to be trapped and the door gets lowered again. Remove the barriers, say "hey google, return my robot to charging dock" and both robot and garage door execute the homecoming command.

Version 2 redesigned parts to stabilise the parking process


Robot vacuum cleaner leaves the docking station (version 1)

The robot returns to the charging station. The ESP received the homecoming event, opened the door and waits for the robot to run over the force resistance sensor.

The kitchen skirting board is heavy, a regular nema 17 cannot lift or hold it. Thus it needs a gearing mechanism. Lucky you if you have a 3D printer at home. The video below show the old version 1 that I meanwhile replaced by a better version.

  • 1 × NodeMCU Lolin V3 Module ESP8266 Garage door controller
  • 1 × A9488 Stepper driver
  • 1 × L298N Just used as 12V to 3.3V converter, had one in spare
  • 1 × High Torque NEMA 17 stepper 1,5 a 40Ncm/57,1 oz.in
  • 1 × RP-S40-ST Force Sensing Resistor

View all 8 components

  • Stabilised parking process

    MiKa12/29/2021 at 22:38 0 comments

    As a result of the limited space under the kitchen cupboard, the robot occasionally has difficulties returning home to the docking station. The robot gets stuck on the cabinet feet foot plate. The parking process then cancels after a few minutes.

    To solve the problem, I partially redesigned the door lifting mechanism in order to provide more space to the robot. In addition by raising the floor (of the lane to the docking station) to the level of the foot plate, the robot can drive over it so that 4 cm of more space can be gained.


    Parking lot dimensions

    The wooden plate increases the floor level by 1.3 cm so that the robot can drive over the plates of the cabinet feet and doesn't get stuck on them any longer.

    Base plate

    The wooden plate is also great to mount the door lifting mechanism and the other parts on it.


    v2 door lifting mechanism

    Unlike in v1, the motor in v2 is on the left side of the lifting mechanism. That creates additional space. 

    All parts are now attached to the wooden plate by screws. No more double-sided adhesive tape required, no risk of parts loosening. The wires of the force sensitive resistor are also fixed and cannot be unclenched by the robot's brushes.

    Pluggable v2 lifting mechanism mount

    Because the height of the garage is also limited, the door lifting mechanism cannot be attached directly to the wooden panel, otherwise the panel cannot be pushed past the feet under the cabinet.

    The mount that is fixed on the wooden plate has two arcs of a circle that fit into the round holes of the lifting mechanism mount. The mount is brought up to the plate at an angle and then set up at a 90 ° angle to the plate. As a result it is then fixed by the weight of the plate.

    The new STL  models are available on github. All changes were made in PR #2

  • How it works

    MiKa04/11/2021 at 16:28 0 comments

    The ESP8266 operates a nema 17 stepper motor that lifts the kitchen skirting board up and down. As long as the robot is in parking postion, one of the robot's wheels stand on an inverted push button so the ESP is powered off. The power is turned on when the robot starts leaving the docking station. On startup the controller executes the following startup routine:

    void setup(){
      Serial.begin(9600);
    
      // stepper pins
      pinMode(enablePin, OUTPUT);
      pinMode(stepPin, OUTPUT);
      pinMode(dirPin, OUTPUT);
    
      // force resistance pin
      pinMode(frsPin, INPUT);
    
      openDoorWaitAndClose(); // function waits 30 sec before closing the door again
     
      // connect to home WiFi
      WiFi.mode(WIFI_STA);
      WiFi.begin(ssid, password);
      Serial.print("Attempting to connect to WPA ");
      Serial.println(ssid);
      if (WiFi.waitForConnectResult() != WL_CONNECTED) {
        Serial.println("WiFi failed!");
        return;
      }
      Serial.println("connected");
      Serial.println(WiFi.localIP());
    
      // register API endpoints on ESP8266WebServer
      server.on("/open", handleOpenDoor); // for test usage
      server.on("/close", handleCloseDoor); // for test usage
      server.on("/homecoming", handleHomecoming); // for use by nodejs server
      server.onNotFound(handleNotFound); 
      server.begin();
      Serial.println("HTTP server started");
    
      // send signal to nodejs server
      wakeupBackendService();
    }

    The nodejs server opens a connection to the Ecovacs REST API and starts to listens for inbound status notification events. If the "returning" event is received, the program forwards the event via http to the ESP8266WebServer

    const observe = async () => {
        if (vacbot !== undefined) {
            console.log('Already observing')
            return
        }
        console.log('Start observing')
    
        const connectStatus = await api.connect(username, passwordHash)
        const devices = await api.devices()
        let vacuum = devices[0];
        vacbot = api.getVacBot(api.uid, EcoVacsAPI.REALM, api.resource, api.user_access_token, vacuum, continent)
    
        vacbot.on('ready', async (event) => {
            console.log('Vacbot ready')
    
            vacbot.on('CleanReport', async (state) => {
                console.log('CleanReport: ' + state)
    
                if (state === 'returning') {
                    disconnect()
                    vacbot = undefined
    
                    console.log('Try open garage door')
                    var response = await openGarage()
                    console.log('Garage door opens...')
    
                    let i = 0
                    while (response !== 200 && i < 5) {
                        i++;
                        console.log(`Error ${response}, retry open garage door #${i}`)
                        response = await openGarage()
                        await sleep(500)
                    }
                }
            })
        })
    
        process.on('SIGINT', function () {
            console.log("\nGracefully shutting down from SIGINT (Ctrl+C)")
            disconnect()
            process.exit()
        });
    
        function disconnect() {
            try {
                vacbot.disconnect();
            } catch (e) {
                console.log('Failure disconnecting: ', e.message)
            }
        }
    }

    The ESP is now set into homecoming mode. The homecoming function waits for the robot to run over the force sensing resistor, that is placed right in front of charging station, and closes the door in the final moment before the system is powered off again.

    void homecoming(){
      openDoor();
      do {
        frsValue = analogRead(frsPin);
        delay(500);
      } while (frsValue == 0); // wait for force resistance sensor signal, the quickly close the door before the power is turned off
      closeDoor();
    }

View all 2 project logs

  • 1
    NodeMCU, motor and force sensitive resistor wiring

    My circuit is run by a single 12V 5A power supply. A  L298N H-Bridge that I had in spare converts 12V in 5V and provides this as input to the ESP8266. This allows me to easily switch on/off the ESP8266 and the stepper driver by a push button. 

    In my first experiments I used the L298N to operate the Nema 17 stepper. That wasn't a good idea. I burned my ESP8266 when I performed a physical load test  to figure out how much kilogram the motor (and driver) is able to lift and hold. So I read a bit about stepper drivers other guys use and gave it a try with the A9488 stepper driver. Even under stress it works like a charm, in the worst case the stepper overruns a step.

    The A9488 has a on-board potentiometer that one can use to adjust voltage for the motor. Default setting was already good but not sufficient, in my case a quater turn in clockwise direction gave the motor enough power to lift my 1 kg kitchen skirting board.

    Don't forget the electrolytic capacitor (100 µF) to protect the stepper driver from spikes. 

  • 2
    3D print the reduction gear

    For this reduction gear design I finally did my first steps with OpenSCAD. To get accurate gears I used the MCAD/involute_gears.scad library. For my previous designs I used FreeCAD which was sort of okish for me, but now that I switched to OpenSCAD there is no going back. The reduction gear source file is available on github, modify according to your needs. In addition you might find https://geargenerator.com/ helpful, too. 

  • 3
    Prepare the kitchen skirting board

    Check the following image on how to install the hings on your kitchen skirting board. If the hing is not centered like in the middle picture, your skirting board won't hang in a 90° angle from your cupboard. However, when the hinge is centered and you place your skirting board not directly at the front of cupboard but a few centimeters back, you need a pad to open the garage door completely without being blocked by the bottom of the cupboard. 

    Depending on your hinge, you can customize yourself the pad with just a few lines of OpenSCAD code:

    difference() {
        cube([42,11,7]);
        translate([1,0,-0.1]) cube([40,10,1.2]);
        translate([8,5,0]) cylinder(h=20,r=1.5,$fn=20);
        translate([34,5,0]) cylinder(h=20,r=1.5,$fn=20);
    }

View all 5 instructions

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Discussions

Khoi wrote 02/09/2023 at 13:51 point

Love this project! Just ordered all the parts. I hope i can get this working, i'm not very good in coding...

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darren wrote 02/02/2023 at 07:05 point

hey @mika love this! I've been been back and forth for awhile now and finally ordered the parts to build this. Only I plan to try and build for homeassistant instead without the force sensor. Quick question if you don't mind as I'm confused, in the parts you mention 100nf capacitor? But in the guide you mention 100uf? This confused me somewhat.  

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supercop89 wrote 02/22/2022 at 20:05 point

Hey @mika, did you receive my private message? Thanks in advance. BR

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Chris Weiss wrote 04/14/2021 at 17:19 point

Most cleaning robots use IR sensors to find their home base, wouldn't the door block this?

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tugsi wrote 04/14/2021 at 17:27 point

I think the door is already opened, while the robot is on the way to his homepoint, over the Video :

"The robot returns to the charging station. The ESP received the homecoming event, opened the door and waits for the robot to run over the force resistance sensor."


There is a command like "Going home" for the robot, if he is ready with cleaning and I think, after this, the door opened and wait for it.

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Chris Weiss wrote 04/14/2021 at 18:35 point

Ahh. My robots don't have the 'going home' command. 

I wonder if you could put in an IR extender on the outside of the door so the robot would be fooled into thinking the door is the dock. Then use something like an NFC reader with a sticker on the robot to open the door and turn off the extender when the robot gets close. 

I know my cheapo robots are pretty good about reacting if I move the dock while they're trying to dock.

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MiKa wrote 04/16/2021 at 21:48 point

hey @Chris Weiss , if your robot's API doesn't support return-events, the simplest solution is to just leave the door open while the cleaning is in progress. 

NFC based solutions might require your robot to always return home on the exact same route since NFC has a limit range of just a few centimetres. Alternatively you could try RFID or Bluetooth and measure signal strength to see if your robot is close to the garage. 

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