Dolphin robotic cleaner which needs a “robotic finger” to operate

2 February 2020

I rent a house which has an absolutely brilliant robotic cleaner called a ‘Dolphin’. It works well except you have to switch it OFF, wait 20 seconds and then switch it ON again for it to operate.

Apparently, the next model up has a Bluetooth interface for many hundreds of dollars more. If I want that option, after the fact, I would have to replace the whole cleaner…not great news!!

I thus set about making a “robotic finger” to mimic this action every day, at a set time.

I use the famous Raspberry Pi 3. The first version of the ‘Robotic finger’s was, ummm… unreliable mechanically, I thus redesigned it. It also has a camera which shows me that the pump is running and the LCD display of the Davis pH meter.

The ‘Robotic finger’ work-bench tested as follows:

“Automation” is what robots do best, things that are either too complex or too mundane for humans. I love this simple robot which takes heart rate, SPO2 from your finger and displays these parameters on an OLED screen! I also love the replicating the technology and so have built some that measure pH and ORP in pool water, alcohol on one’s breath etc.

The fascination for me is how I might use all the IoT sensor parameters to improve machine condition monitoring as an example below (warning it is quite technical and for such an audience).