I thought I was pretty lucky to find a Neato robot vacuum in a thrift store for $8. It didn’t work in the store and that’s why it was cheap, but I have since determined it was fully functional except for its battery pack. While waiting for its replacement battery pack to arrive, Player 2 has entered the game! [Emily] managed to find another Neato robot vacuum in a different thrift store. The new find is a model XV-12 and it included the charging dock for $11.

A little web research indicated that these two robot vacuums are contemporaries, both followed up Neato’s XV-11. The XV-12 is the direct successor that replaced the XV-11, and the XV-21 is a premium offering sold simultaneously with the XV-11. Aside from the cosmetic difference of purple plastic top on the XV-12, there are a few functional differences.

The cleaning brush roller is different. The XV-12 uses a bidirectional design with flat flexible plastic blades. The XV-21 uses a unidirectional design with a combination of flexible plastic blades and bristles. The XV-12 brush can be mounted in either direction – note that geared teeth to engage the toothed belt on both sides of the roller. The XV-21 is designed to spin a specific direction – brushing debris towards the center of the vacuum – and only has geared teeth on one end of the roller because it won’t work properly if mounted the other way.

The dust bin filters are also different between these two models. While the XV-12 uses a flat sheet, the XV-21 uses a pleated design for greater surface area. This partially compensates for the more restrictive filter used in a XV-21 that captures more particles from the vacuum air stream.

The XV-21 was sold as the upgrade model. Its roller brush with curved flexible blades and bristles combine to pick up more dirt, and its pleated filter keeps more of that dirt in the dust bin instead of passing it into the exhaust. These two differences reportedly improve vacuum capability at the cost of greater power consumption which translates to shorter run time on battery.

In addition to the design differences between the XV-12 and the XV-21, there are additional differences between these two specific thrift store finds. The XV-21 was surprisingly clean hinting at a very low usage in its previous life, but the XV-12 shows signs of a well-used robot vacuum.

With a successful all-up system test of Neato XV-21, running on hacked-up battery packs through a full vacuum cycle, we have confidence everything works on this thrift store bargain except for the battery pack. So focus returns to these NiMH battery packs.

The default option is to buy some battery packs specifically built and sold as replacement batteries for a Neato robot vacuum. A straightforward Amazon search for “Neato battery pack” will return this “Amazon’s Choice” item (*) at $30 for 4000mAh NiMH packs.

A tempting choice is to purchase some lithium-ion batteries that would also fit in the Neato battery bay. However, battery packs sold on Amazon are typically designed for very high draw applications like multi rotor aircraft. Batteries designed to survive such use tend to have lower energy density. Thus lithium packs that fit within the bay’s dimensions actually don’t have much significantly higher capacity than 4000mAh.

Another concern with installing lithium batteries is the fact the Neato’s on board charging circuits are designed for NiMH battery cells, which has a different charging profile. Charging lithium cells as if they were NiMH cells risks damaging the lithium cells and possibly lighting them on fire.

There is, however, this item (*) which are lithium replacement packs intended and designed as an upgrade option for Neato vacuums. Not only are they sized appropriately to fit, they also have an integrated battery management system. Presumably, the circuit will make the Neato brain think there’s a NiMH battery pack installed but treat the lithium cells properly. At 4400mAh it offers 10% higher claimed capacity relative to default option, but at over double the cost, the cost/performance ratio is poor.

There is also the option to purchase new NiMH battery cells and rebuild the battery pack myself, reusing all the associated parts from the existing pack. I had expected this to be the lowest-cost option by supplying my own labor, but when I searched for NiMH battery cells in 4/3A form factor with 4000mAh capacity, I was surprised to find that they were selling for more than $3 per cell. There are 6 cells per pack and a Neato requires two packs, for 12 total cells. This means buying raw cells and rebuilding them myself would cost over $36, more than just buying a prebuilt pack from Amazon!

With this little bit of research into lithium upgrade option and rebuild option, it looks like the default $30 option is the best way to go. But before that replacement battery pack arrived, my Neato got a friend!

(*) Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Using small batteries I hacked into existing battery bays, I was able to query sensor status and command individual motors. However, those small batteries were not powerful enough to run multiple motors simultaneously, which meant a full system test would not be possible until larger batteries are installed. At this point I could order some Neato-specific replacement batteries and have decent confidence it will work, but I would like additional confirmation before I spend money.

But I didn’t have any batteries that were more powerful and still small enough to fit within Neato vacuum’s existing battery bays. This meant batteries had to be installed externally. And if they’re going to be external, I might as well go with the biggest batteries I have on hand: those I purchased for Sawppy the rover.

But where could I install those batteries?

The most obvious place: is to put them on top of the dust collection bin. This is a popular location for Roomba battery retrofits, because it preserves weight balance and does not hinder Roomba operations. However, it won’t work for a Neato: this position blocks the line of sight for the laser distance scanner.

Installing the batteries on the front bumper would be out of lidar line of sight, and might help improve vacuum performance because their weight would help push the dirt brush roller into the ground. But this would change the behavior of front bumper which might confuse vacuum mapping algorithms, and using fragile batteries as your front bumper is never a good idea.

If we put batteries off to the sides, it preserves front clearance but now it interferes with side clearance. The vacuum would no longer be able to follow along walls closely to vacuum near walls if the batteries are attached to the sides.

Installing behind the vacuum disturbs the weight balance – battery weight is now trying to lift the brush roller off the ground. The back is not flat, making installation difficult. And that circular shape is there for a reason – its clearance helps the robot turn in tight spots. Batteries install behind the robot would get bashed against obstacles as the robot turned.

And obvious we don’t have any way to mount batteries on the underside of the vacuum, as there is only about 5mm of ground clearance. That exhausts all the potential directions we can go for external mounting.

Time to get creative.

Rethink top mounting, we recognize the problem is that we can’t block laser distance scanner’s line of sight. It looks out all around the top of the vacuum, except for one place: the raised protective cap above the lidar housing. Batteries mounted on top of that cap would not block laser scanner’s line of sight.

Wires were run from battery compartment, which required drilling two small holes. To keep the power wire out of sight of lidar, the wires were routed through existing grooves on top of vacuum body and then followed existing  support pillars for lidar housing. This way, the wires should not introduce additional blind spots.

With this hack, the robot vacuum can run on my pair of Sawppy rover batteries, which are plenty powerful enough to run all vacuum systems simultaneously. Now this little Neato is alive and can run through a full vacuum cycle, verifying that all systems worked.

Obviously, this won’t be the final long term solution. For one thing, Sawppy wants its batteries back. For another, the additional height on top of the robot hampers its ability to get under furniture for vacuuming, and the exposed wires are vulnerable to tangling on protrusions. What we need next are batteries powerful enough to run a Neato and fit within existing battery bays.

With the experimental batteries in place, the computer boots up and stays up for longer than three seconds. I tried to run a vacuum cycle but that was too much for these batteries to handle, so for now I’ll stick with digital exploration starting with the standard UI to dump revision information on components inside this particular Neato XV-21 robot vacuum.

After that, it’s time to go exploring through its USB serial port diagnostics!

I went straight to the most interesting component: the laser distance scanner module. First I had to put my vacuum into test mode with testmode on. Followed by setldsrotation on to turn on the motor that sweeps the laser. And finally, fetch a set of laser distance data with getldsscan. This gave me a large set of numbers. According to the legend given in the first line of the response, a distance and intensity number per degree of sweep. Partial excerpt below:

AngleInDegrees,DistInMM,Intensity,ErrorCodeHEX
0,2378,82,0
1,2397,88,0
2,0,88,8021
3,2494,85,0
4,2505,82,0
5,2509,12,0
[…]
355,2289,99,0
356,2303,103,0
357,2303,99,0
358,2315,94,0
359,2367,91,0
ROTATION_SPEED,5.10

Future experimentation will determine what range of distance values are typical, similarly for intensity values. A quick web search failed to find a reference guide for error hex codes, but hopefully there’ll be a small set that I can infer from context. More exploration to come!

In the meantime, I repeated the getldsscan command to verify the values are getting updated. They were – I received a similar but slightly different set of numbers. Hooray! the most important sensor looks like it is functioning.

Next item on the exploration list: querying analog sensor values with getanalogsensors.

SensorName,Value
WallSensorInMM,63,
BatteryVoltageInmV,16120,
LeftDropInMM,60,
RightDropInMM,60,
LeftMagSensor,-2,
RightMagSensor,-3,
UIButtonInmV,3317,
VacuumCurrentInmA,0,
ChargeVoltInmV,132,
BatteryTemp0InC,34,
BatteryTemp1InC,31,
CurrentInmA,622,
SideBrushCurrentInmA,29,
VoltageReferenceInmV,1225,
AccelXInmG,-8,
AccelYInmG,-12,
AccelZInmG,1092,

I see three distance sensors – wall and two drop sensors, one in each front corner. It’s not immediately clear what “Mag” in left and right “MagSensor” referred to. Do they detect magnetic fields? Or are they measuring magnitude of something? Bottom three lines indicate the vacuum sensor suite includes a three-axis accelerometer which can measure in units of thousands of G, implied by a Z value nearly 1000 in this vacuum sitting on the floor. Remainder of the values are related to power management.

The 3-axis accelerometer values above from getanalogsensors partially overlap with results of getaccel. As the name indicates, this one is completely focused on accelerometer readings and includes results of additional calculation in the form of pitch and roll in degrees and a sum of acceleration vector.

Label,Value
PitchInDegrees, -0.64
RollInDegrees, -0.53
XInG,-0.012
YInG,-0.010
ZInG, 1.079
SumInG, 1.079

The list of digital sensor values from getdigitalsensorsis shorter, and for whatever reason, labelled in all capital letters.

Digital Sensor Name, Value
SNSR_DC_JACK_CONNECT,0
SNSR_DUSTBIN_IS_IN,1
SNSR_LEFT_WHEEL_EXTENDED,0
SNSR_RIGHT_WHEEL_EXTENDED,0
LSIDEBIT,0
LFRONTBIT,0
RSIDEBIT,0
RFRONTBIT,0

Here we can see whether the dustbin is installed, whether either or both wheels are at full extension, and it looks like there are four switches associated with the front bumper. The top line shows if a charging plug is connected, but that’s only one of many parameters around power management. Most of the rest are in getcharger.

Label,Value
FuelPercent,88
BatteryOverTemp,0
ChargingActive,0
ChargingEnabled,0
ConfidentOnFuel,0
OnReservedFuel,0
EmptyFuel,0
BatteryFailure,0
ExtPwrPresent,0
ThermistorPresent[0],1
ThermistorPresent[1],1
BattTempCAvg[0],33
BattTempCAvg[1],31
VBattV,16.03
VExtV,0.16
Charger_mAH,0

If I were to create my own control logic for driving my Neato around, the most important parameter here is FuelPercent. I’ll have to be responsible about not draining the battery too far, beyond that I can leave the rest in the capable hands of Neato’s existing battery management system. Speaking of power consumption, the biggest drains are the motors, and I can monitor them all with getmotors.

Parameter,Value
Brush_RPM,0
Brush_mA,0
Vacuum_RPM,0
Vacuum_mA,0
LeftWheel_RPM,0
LeftWheel_Load%,0
LeftWheel_PositionInMM,-1
LeftWheel_Speed,0
RightWheel_RPM,0
RightWheel_Load%,0
RightWheel_PositionInMM,-1
RightWheel_Speed,0
Charger_mAH, 0
SideBrush_mA,28

Not very exciting at the moment, because all motors are at a stop. I imagine these numbers will get more interesting once the robot gets underway.

One final discovery in inputs: when in test mode, the user interface buttons on the top of the robot no longer trigger their usual functions. I could check for status of all five buttons via getbuttons which implies I could use these buttons in my own projects without worrying that I’ll trigger the default vacuum behavior. Cool!

Button Name,Pressed
BTN_SOFT_KEY,0
BTN_SCROLL_UP,0
BTN_START,0
BTN_BACK,0
BTN_SCROLL_DOWN,0

But if I want to actually have my own user interface using those buttons, I would need to also display my own information on the LCD. Which brings us to phase 2 of playing over USB: start sending commands to see if components follow orders.

My Neato XV-21 vacuum couldn’t power on when I found it in a thrift store, and the problem (or at least, the first problem) was its battery pack: it could only deliver enough power to boot up the onboard computer and run it for about three seconds before its voltage dropped and the computer shut down again.

In order to assess the rest of the vacuum, I need to find a replacement power source. Since the actual condition of vacuum components are still unknown, I’m not inclined to spend money buying batteries specific to a Neato robot vacuum. The next experiment, then, is to wire up something out of batteries already on hand. I looked through my pile of batteries to see which would satisfy the following criteria:

• Delivers roughly 7.2 volt power of a six-cell NiMH battery.
• Fits within Neato battery compartment.
• A pair of identical batteries, one for each bay.

The winner was a pair of batteries I had for my E-Flite remote control helicopter. The aircraft itself had long since been crashed and trashed, but I kept its batteries. Two cell lithium polymer batteries have nominal voltage of 7.4 volts, within operational range of 6-cell NiMH batteries. Physically they were small enough to fit within the battery compartment, but at 800 mAh their power capacity is too low for full vacuum operation. They were designed to deliver high power to fly a small helicopter toy though only for a few minutes. Ideally they can run the vacuum motors briefly to verify their operation, but mostly I just need them to run the Neato computer for more than three seconds.

To connect these batteries, I first disassembled the old tired original battery pack. Before disassembly, I noticed a rectangular bump visible in the battery pack. I had thought this was the thermistor but I was wrong. It appears to be a temperature safety fuse. There was also an over-current protection amperage fuse in the pack. NiMH cells are relatively safe but it’s still good to see additional safety measures inside these packs.

I needed the battery pack’s wiring harness for my battery experiment, so it was cut free. I kept the temperature monitoring thermistor and wired the positive and ground battery power wires to a JST-RCY connector that will mate with my E-Flite battery pack.

Once soldered, I connected the pair of batteries and plugged them into my Neato XV-21.

I was greeted by the same boot-up screen I saw before, but this time the screen stayed on instead of flickering off after three seconds. Now it’s time to try talking to the vacuum.

The batteries from a Neato XV-21 were found to be flat and possibly damaged. This would certainly explain why the little robot vacuum failed to power on in the thrift store where I found it. Since the thrift store didn’t have its associated charging base, my fallback was to leave its batteries to trickle charge (at 100 milliamps) overnight on a bench power supply.

The battery packs nominal voltage was listed at 7.2 volt per pack, so the voltage limit for charging the pair in series was set to 14.4 volts. Fully charged six-cell NiMH battery packs can be up to 9 volts each, for 18 volts total, but setting to 14.4 volts leave us with a bit of headroom in case these batteries didn’t behave as expected. This turned out to be a good idea.

When I checked in on the batteries the next morning, I saw voltage sitting at 14.4 and amperage had dropped to 40 milliamps. If all goes well, the voltage would be evenly divided across the two packs at 7.2 volts each. This was not the case: one battery pack (I’ll arbitrarily name it pack A from now on) was holding at 7.9 volts and the other (now designated pack B) at 6.5. If it weren’t for the headroom, we might have inadvertently pushed pack A beyond its limits.

At this point I got distracted by other events and left the batteries sitting for a week. Checking in from time to time, I measured their open circuit voltage and wrote them down. It was an unplanned test of the batteries’ self-discharge rate.

Pack A:

• Overnight trickle charge: 7.9 Volts
• After one day: 4.67 V
• After three days: 4.44 V
• After a week: 2.0 V

Pack B:

• Overnight trickle charge: 6.5 Volts
• After one day: 2.77 V
• After three days: 2.68 V
• After a week: 2.61 V

While it is normal for NiMH batteries to self-discharge over time, this observed discharge curve was far more severe than is acceptable. Looking at the voltage discharge behavior for pack A, it appears to have two almost-useless cells, three weak cells, and one good cell. Pack B behavior hints at four almost-useless cells and two good cells.

But even if they are unusable to actually run the vacuum, they are still better than dead weight: these batteries can hold a charge for a very brief period. So they’re reconnected to the power supply to trickle charge again. I don’t expect them to actually power any motors, but perhaps there’d be enough to power on the electronics for a short while. Hopefully long enough for me to assess if the rest of the vacuum is healthy.

After another overnight charge, I plugged them into the vacuum and pushed the power button. Good news: they did power on the electronics for a short while. Bad news: It only lasted for three seconds, far too short to assess anything else about the vacuum. But the vacuum computer did boot, and that’s enough motivation to keep going.

We’ve pulled the battery packs out of a Neato XV-21 found in a thrift shop. We’re pretty sure the red and black wires are battery positive and ground, but if so we expect to see a few volts across those wires. The fact we measured less than a volt indicates this battery is flat and may even be damaged. Well, at least this would be consistent with the fact it wouldn’t power on in the thrift shop.

Fortunately, rechargeable NiMH battery cells are hardier than lithium batteries and they might possibly revive with a charge. And even if they were permanently damaged, they are less likely to turn themselves into fireworks as damaged lithium batteries sometimes do. Since we read a nonzero voltage, none of the cells have failed as an open circuit. Some might have failed as a short circuit acting as a resistor dissipating energy but not holding the charge. With this unknown, we shouldn’t charge the batteries anywhere near as fast as we could if they were known to be healthy.

A bench top power supply was set to a maximum voltage of 14.4 volts and maximum amperage of 0.1 amp (= 100 milliamps). Using a piece of wire, the two battery packs were connected in series. (Which is where the 14.4 came from: adding up their nominal 7.2 volts per pack.) Once connected in series, they were connected to the bench top power supply and we watched the meters.

If we instantly hit maximum voltage and maximum amperage, it indicates a short circuit somewhere, possibly in a dead battery cell acting as a resistor turning that 1.44 watts into heat. Fortunately this did not happen. We hit the 100 milliamp limit immediately as expected and the voltage started rising, which is consistent with a battery pack trying to charge.

After a few minutes, we disconnected the power supply and measured battery pack voltage: they now measure a few volts, higher than before. This increased confidence that our positive/negative wiring guesses were correct and also proof at least a few cells can hold some amount of charge.

The batteries were reconnected and, for the first half hour, we periodically touched each of the cells to see if they were hot to the touch. Some of the cells were warmer than others, but none were alarmingly so. We’ll let the power supply continue slowly feeding the battery pack overnight and see how they behave.

This Neato XV-21 robot vacuum did not power on when I found it in the thrift store. Now that I’ve verified there isn’t anything fundamentally broken or missing on the robot, the next thing is to try to charge its batteries. But since the thrift store didn’t have its charger, we have to go to plan B: Pull out the batteries and see if we can work with it.

The interior component packaging of this vacuum divides its battery into two packs, each in their own battery bay on either side of its dust collection chamber. These two bays are accessible from the bottom of the vacuum, each with a door that opened by unscrewing a pair of Philips screws. Each battery pack has a 4-wire pigtail terminating in a connector that plugs into the vacuum.

It takes quite a bit of force to remove the connector. One battery was removed without incident, but the other battery required so much force it actually broke something holding the vacuum side connectors to the vacuum body. Fortunately this appears to only be a minor mechanical annoyance and will not derail the project. At worse, we now have a connector that will rattle as the robot moves around.

Once the battery pack was removed we could read its printed information, identifying itself as a nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) battery pack. The general shape implies six cells, and the stated nominal voltage of 7.2 is consistent with six cells in series. Each cell is rated with a capacity of 3200 milliamp-hours. I didn’t know what “4/3A” meant but a quick web search indicated it was the physical form factor (size) of the battery. “McNair” appears to be the name of a battery manufacturing company, and finally “MC20120924” probably meant this battery was manufactured on September 24th, 2012.

Attention then turned to the four-wire connector. Typical convention hints black is probably negative and red is probably positive. A voltmeter said there was less than a volt across those wires, which is not just flat but might also indicate damaged battery cells. The next question: What are the two yellow wires? It is something the vacuum control board would want to know about, and our hypothesis is that it is a thermistor to measure battery’s temperature. As an experiment to test this hypothesis, we put a ohm meter across the two yellow wires and warmed up the battery pack with our hands. We saw resistance change in response to temperature.

With some confidence the yellow wires are not directly involved in charging, it’s time to put a little bit of power across those red and black wires to see what happens.

Of course, I didn’t buy a nonfunctional robot vacuum from a thrift store just to admire how clean it is. I bought it to see if it can be brought back to life. So out comes the screwdriver set and it’s time to dig into those non user serviceable parts inside. Fortunately Neato didn’t feel the need to complicate this effort with “security” bits that would only hamper resourceful hackers by a few seconds – they were straightforward Philips head screws. I had expected fine pitched machine screws, but they were actually coarse pitched screws that self-tap into plastic. This limits the number of times we can assemble and disassemble this vacuum before the screws become too loose to hold themselves in place, but that’s a concern for the future.

There are three easily accessible panels. Two rectangular battery compartment doors each held by two screws, and a large semicircular panel held in place by four screws.

Underneath the semicircular panel is a large centrifugal (squirrel-cage) fan responsible for creating the suction that gives vacuum cleaner their name and purpose. The filter sitting in the back end of the dust bin is visible. Air would move past the filter, through the fan, and exhaust out the grating at the back. It would not have been surprising to find a coat of fine dust that made their way past the filter, but the fan compartment is pristine. Either the filter is far more capable than I give it credit for, or this vacuum was indeed barely used.

On either side of the fan are motor gearbox assemblies for driving the vacuum around. The motor appears to be a commodity DC brushed motor, but it does have some sort of encoder mounted to its back. Looking at the circuit board we saw a single sensor, indicating this encoder can sense motor movement but not its direction: a full quadrature encoder would have had two sensors on the board.

Also visible behind the robot’s left wheel (right side of top picture) are wiring for external connectors:

• Mini-USB for serial data, which would be extremely interesting if I could get the vacuum powered up.
• Barrel jack for a charging adapter I don’t have.
• Two thick metal wires to make contact with a Neato charging dock, which I also don’t have.

Given that the official chargers were absent from this thrift store purchase, the next step is to remove these two battery packs and see what we can do with them.

I went to a thrift store to take pictures, but came home with a Neato XV-21 vacuum that did not power on. At $7.99, it was a cheap gamble to see what might be usable in this robot vacuum cleaner. In my cursory in-store examination, it looked to be in good shape. After I took a little time for a closer look, I realized it was actually in even better shape than I had initially thought.

Of course, there’s no mistaking the vacuum for new. There is dirt in the dust bin and visible black smudges on top of the vacuum. But beyond that I found almost no other signs of wear. The exterior sides of this unit are clean, free of the scuff marks and other marring I associate with robot vacuum veterans. Although my experience are mostly with affordable models of Roomba and similar vacuums that perform a random walk through its environment, bumping into things along the way. The selling point of a Neato is its lidar for object avoidance, so the nearly pristine sides of may just be a result of excellent object avoidance and not lack of use.

Its floor cleaning brushes show some dirt but is actually really clean. My own home vacuum would show more dirt than this after a minute of use. Brush roller drive belt looks to be in good shape.

At this point I’m still undecided whether this was a barely used robot vacuum or maybe the previous owner is just very meticulous about keeping their tools clean. The clean brush and dust bin certainly imply the former, but the latter is also quite possible as indicated by the presence of original protective plastic over the control panel. The previous owner was one of those people who did not remove plastic protective film that were meant to be removed, a mindset very different from mine.

Me? I peel that stuff off before I start taking this vacuum apart to examine its internals.

My ROS learning robot Phoebe was built mainly around a laser distance scanner module salvaged from a Neato robot vacuum cleaner. At the time I knew people were selling them for $50-$75 on Craigslist in varying condition, but I was content to pay $45 for just the laser scanner. It was all I needed for my own robot exploration purposes. I thought a full Neato vacuum might be fun to play with, but I have enough projects on my to-do list that I didn’t feel the need to go out and find one.

Unless when I do. I recently wrote a Hackaday article about bargain shopping in a thrift store, and I needed a picture to go with my article. I went into my local thrift store to take some pictures, but it was also an opportunity to practice what I preached. I spent most of my time in the electronics section and didn’t find anything I wanted to take home with me. On my way out the door, though, I took a glance at the kitchen electronics section and spotted this beauty: a Neato robot vacuum with a price tag of only $7.99.

It doesn’t power on, and external accessories were nowhere to be found: neither a wall wart charger nor its charging dock. But it looked to be in pretty good condition with only minor cosmetic blemishes on the exterior. Aside from the missing charger, all other major components appear to be present. But the purchase decision was based on the most interesting part: I looked inside the top bump to verify presence of a familiar looking laser scanner unit. If I all I get out of this $7.99 is a Neato lidar, I’ll be happy. If anything else worked, they would just be icing on the cake.

It’s a big question mark, but it’s one I’m buying to take home for a closer look.