Will this notebook power supply work for Roomba 560?

alvaro76 · Joined: 22 Apr 2008 Posts: 5

hello, i am waiting for my Roomba 560 to be delivered from the US to Germany. Maybe i was a bit premature, but before i found this forum i allready ordered a power supply on ebay.

Can somebody predict if it will work or damage the other parts?
It would be great if somebody knew this. My poor school knowledge about electricity makes me think, that if the 22.8V of the PS are stable the correct ampere should result from the roombas power demand...

tingshen · Joined: 06 Feb 2008 Posts: 25

i heard the stock charger is an intelligent power supply where it does varies in voltage especially during the charging process. According to some people, the voltage will be higher during initial charge and dropped down to a lower one b4 it's fully charged.

As laptop charger is "dumb" constant voltage charger, it may not be suitable.

any mod or engineer here could advice if what I heard was correct?

bullfrog · Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Posts: 61 Location: Georgia

Incorrect, The Roomba charger is dumb also. The micro processor on board the Roomba controls all the charging functions.

tingshen · Joined: 06 Feb 2008 Posts: 25

so is it perfectly fine to use any charger that output 22.5v and min 1.5A?

bullfrog · Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Posts: 61 Location: Georgia

Tungshin, Where did I say that? Are you trying to read to much into the answer.
The roomba fast charger puts out 22 VDC @ 1.25A.
22.5VDC OK , 1.5A on a 4XXX Roomba I would not because of weak U2 & U4 transistors. On a 5XX Roomba I'm not sure.

alvaro76 · Joined: 22 Apr 2008 Posts: 5

IT LOOKS LIKE IT DOES WORK!!! :D Of course I could not wait to try it out when finally my roomba arrived yesterday evening. I only had to change the plug. The current reads 22.8V-22.9V (idle).
The charging light on the roomba started the amber pulsating when i first put it on the base and it charged for maybe 2h. Then i played with it for quite a while and it returned to the base after a full cleaning cycle (maybe 35 min). There it charged over night.

I will post how it will keep working. So far it looks like this power supply is a good and cheap solution (i got 2 of them for 6 Euros on ebay!).

tingshen · Joined: 06 Feb 2008 Posts: 25

glad to know that it works. However, is this constant voltage supply going to make the the battery become very "unhealthy" in long run?

debugger · Joined: 20 Jan 2007 Posts: 730 Location: UK - Glasgow

tingshen wrote: However, is this constant voltage supply going to make the the battery become very "unhealthy" in long run?

The fact that it's constant is OK, the fact that it's approx 0.3 to 0.4 volts higher than the iRobot supply my give issues long-term.

alvaro76 · Joined: 22 Apr 2008 Posts: 5

hmm, i hope the 22.8V wont do any harm. Little Roomba did a 3-room cleaning cycle today without any problems.

alvaro76 · Joined: 22 Apr 2008 Posts: 5

Update: The power supply works great for my 2 Roombas 560 since 4 months now. The only time I took out my old vacuum cleaner since then was when i chased insects at the ceiling. :D

Koala · Joined: 19 May 2008 Posts: 7

I use the same power supply on my Roomba too. The tested output current of mine is 22,99 Volt (so, quite 23 Volt).
Works great with no issue. This power supply is more compact than the iRobot one.

Only one bad point to mention: the DC plug is a 5mm type but with an inner diameter too small (here 2mm) for the Roomba. You need to cut it and to solder a new one in place (5mm outside/3mm inside, costing around 0.5$).

zenkinz · Joined: 13 Oct 2008 Posts: 2

alvaro76 wrote: hello, i am waiting for my Roomba 560 to be delivered from the US to Germany. Maybe i was a bit premature, but before i found this forum i allready ordered a power supply on ebay.

Hi alvaro,

can you confirm that your 22.8V 1A adapter works well with 560?

I used a 24V 1A, and it didn't work. I don't know if it's because of my flat-out battery (after playing with it the night before after I unbox it) since I read from another thread that the charging voltage varies while doing a full recharge.

Or is it the Ampere that's too low?

After using a step down transform, the roomba is now charging, but I'm not sure if I should continue with voltage converter after reading the possibility of impact of using different frequency voltage supply.

colinsfotoelectrico · Joined: 13 Jan 2008 Posts: 19 Location: Bedford, UK

I would not be concerned about frequency issues. Long before that causes any problem, you will be using a much later model :wink: