Page 324 - Hacking Roomba

Chapter 14 — Putting Linux on Roomba 305

The WL-HDD is made to be taken apart by the user. Pull on the back panel while holding
the case and the entire logic board slides out, ready for you to add a 2.5˝ IDE hard drive (see
Figure 14-3). This project doesn’t require you to install a hard drive, and if you do, it will
almost double the power usage when the drive is active.

FIGURE 14-3: Asus WL-HDD insides, ready to take a 2.5˝ IDE hard drive

If you install OpenWrt, you can even plug a printer into the USB port and make it a print
server.

For lots of interesting hacker info on the Asus WL line of routers, visit http://wl500g.info/
and http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Hardware/Asus/WL-HDD.

Installing OpenWrt

Thanks to boot_wait, installing new firmware is a snap and entirely reversible. It’s really just
a matter of upgrading the firmware on the wireless router. This is something these devices are
designed to do and is entirely reversible. To make the process go as smoothly as possible, you
need to do a bit of preparation and learn a bit about the different varieties of OpenWrt.