It’s Easy to Build Your Own Roomba Virtual Wall

iRobot’s line of Roomba robotic vacuums are very convenient devices—if you can deal with a few quirks. Those quirks mostly come down to the Roomba getting confused by furniture and clutter, sucking up cords, going into areas where you’d prefer it didn’t, and terrorizing your cat. There isn’t much you can do to protect fluffy, but you can make a virtual wall that your Roomba won’t cross. As Eric of the MKme Lab YouTube channel demonstrates, that’s actually very affordable and easy to do on your own.

iRobot does sell their own Virtual Wall that is compatible with many of their Roomba vacuums, but those can be fairly expensive—almost insultingly so, once you see how simple the hardware actually is. As Eric found out, the only thing you need is an infrared LED and some way to modulate it. There are various ICs that are capable of the simple modulation needed for the Roomba to register the infrared beam, but the easiest way to accomplish this is with a microcontroller development board like the Arduino Nano.

Other than the IR LED and the Arduino Nano, the only other components you’ll need are a USB cable and power supply, and a low-value resistor current-limiting resistor for the LED. The provided Arduino code uses the IRremote library to pulse the LED in marks and spaces of equal lengths. Eric housed all of the hardware within a basic 3D-printed enclosure, but you can mount the Arduino and LED however you like. Make sure it’s low enough that the IR beam will intersect the Roomba, and you’re all done! The beam will act as a wall that the Roomba won’t go through.