Eyes for the robot

Still upgrading the robot vacuum. To make its AI feel more at home, I decided to give it sight.

I had an old Wi-Fi camera from Rostelecom lying around, which I'd already rooted and installed OpenIPC on.

So I took it apart and soldered it to the lidar's power supply, which happened to be exactly 5 volts (and the board had some handy unused pads).

A couple of prompts later, all the sensors and the video feed are available in ROS2. It used to be a robot vacuum. Now it's a robot vacuum/security guard. Zima is getting closer.

Camera mounted above the lidar, with the power cable routed inside the body

The robot taken apart: lidar, main board, and wiring

Workbench during the modification: camera, soldering iron, and multimeter