Simple Physical Controller for a Robot Vacuum (ESP32 + Raspberry Pi)



The idea for this project came from a very practical situation at home.

We have a Roborock robot vacuum, but it is configured only on my phone. In daily use, I mostly rely on room-by-room cleaning, which requires a bit of preparation before starting the vacuum. I wanted my kids to be able to start cleaning as well, but without needing access to my phone.

Recently, I experimented with an unofficial API available on GitHub, and I found that it was relatively easy to trigger cleaning commands for individual rooms. That gave me the idea to build a simple, dedicated controller.


Hardware Design

The device itself is intentionally simple:

  • ESP32 Huzzah (with built-in battery support)

  • Small LED display

  • Battery-powered operation

  • Custom 3D-printed enclosure

I designed a small case and printed it using a 3D printer to make the controller compact and easy to use for kids.


Challenges and Decisions

One of the main challenges was communication with the vacuum.

From a previous project, I knew that handling HTTPS requests directly on microcontrollers can be problematic. However, in this case, that assumption turned out to be irrelevant. The vacuum’s API does not use standard HTTP/HTTPS communication, but instead relies on lower-level TCP communication on specific ports.

After spending some time analyzing this, I decided not to reimplement or reverse-engineer the low-level protocol. That path would be complex and hard to maintain.

Instead, I chose a simpler and more robust workaround.


Leveraging an Existing Setup

In an earlier project, I had already integrated a Raspberry Pi into my coffee machine. That turned out to be very useful here.

I installed the CLI-based vacuum control tool (from GitHub) on the Raspberry Pi. Then I exposed a simple HTTP endpoint—reusing the same local server that the coffee machine project already provided.

This created a clean bridge:

  • ESP32 sends a simple HTTP request over the local network

  • Raspberry Pi translates it into the proper CLI/API command

  • The vacuum starts cleaning a specific room

 





Final Thoughts

Yes, the architecture might seem a bit over-engineered at first glance. However, in practice, it turned out to be:

  • very easy to implement

  • simple to set up

  • reliable in daily use

  • maintainable in the long term

Most importantly, it solved the original problem: the kids can now start the vacuum with a single button, without needing a phone.

 

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