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Chapter 4 — Building a Roomba Bluetooth Interface 69
78L05 +5VDC voltage regulator IC, Jameco part number 51182
220 ohm resistor (red-red-brown color code), Jameco part number 107941
Two 1µF polarized electrolytic capacitors, Jameco part number 94160PS
8-pin header receptacle, Jameco part number 70754
BlueSMiRF Bluetooth modem, SparkFun part number RF-BlueSMiRF
You also need a Bluetooth-capable computer. If your computer doesn’t have Bluetooth capabil-
ity built in, then you can get a USB Bluetooth dongle. For Windows and Linux, SparkFun sells
a generic dongle (SparkFun part number RF-BT-USB). For older Mac OS X machines, you
can get the D-Link DBT-120 from the Apple Store. Figure 4-2 shows what these dongles look
like. They’re cheap and unobtrusive. The D-Link one is neat because it has an LED that blinks
when Bluetooth activity occurs. The generic one from SparkFun is neat because it’s a Class 1
device and so should be good for up to 100 meters.
FIGURE 4-2: USB Bluetooth dongles for computers without Bluetooth
All the tools from Chapter 3 will be used here too to build the project in this chapter.
Naturally, all of the usual safety precautions should also be followed as described in the previ-
ous chapter and in Appendix A.
