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Valetudo – Free your vacuum cleaner from the cloud
- alex3305 4y agoGreat project. Every once in a while I'm checking it out to see if an easier root method has become available for my vacuum (Roborock S5 Max). But unfortunately it is still quite involved.
- brnt 4y agoI recently bought one well supported by Valetudo (Dreame W10), but when I saw the flash instructions I decided that I'll just run my unit without setting it up with internet access and an account. That works fine, so I'm not really keen on doing the flash anymore.
- fxtentacle 4y agoI then got banned from their Telegram group for mentioning that I managed to make multi-map support work on my fork... [EDIT: Actually not, that was a misunderstanding on my part.] That said, the dustcloud OS that Valetudo is built upon is pretty amazing and for a Dreame W10 - the robot that I have - you only need a 3.3V USB to UART adapter to gain root, install dustcloud OS and thereby get an ssh server running on the robot. The necessary pins were accessible without any disassembly at all. Once you have dustcloud OS, it'll redirect any China cloud DNS to localhost. You can then ssh into the robot to install Valetudo or an alternative. Here's my log of the rooting experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34137078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34137078
- rubenbe 4y agoValetudo is an awesome project. But indeed the main developer's refusal to add multi-map support is its biggest disadvantage. (But of course it's a maintainers fair right) Do you mind sharing your multi-map fork?
- fxtentacle 4y agohttps://github.com/DeutscheKI/dreame-w10-valetudo-fork https://github.com/DeutscheKI/dreame-w10-valetudo-fork
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- hypfer 4y agoYou were banned because you would not stop pinging me about implementing multi-floor support. Frankly, you're one of these people that are utterly incapable of accepting a "no" and would rather change the laws of physics then ever admitting that they're in the wrong. It's concerning to say the least. Not to start another discussion here though, but I won't allow you to continue this abuse by attempting to control the narrative.
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y agoI wish you guys both cooled down. One added mutli-map, another refused to merge it. This would be a conflict story 20 years ago, today you just develop your fork on Github and the community takes care of the rest - if many people need multimap, some changes will happen sooner or later. I take the opportunity to thank both of you for your work as I plan to use it as soon as I find some free time to root my device.
- hypfer 4y agoI have yet to see someone implement that feature in a non-hackish way that fully works reliably and future proof on all supported robots while also not introducing crippling technical debt that will hurt the project in the long run. All I've seen so far is people greatly reducing the scope by focusing on their single robot with their specific subset of use-case and then saying "hey look it's so easy". Yes, it is indeed easy if you drop most of the requirements. Who would've thought. That said, yes, that's exactly what open source is for. Someone can take the code and add modifications that cater to their specific need. Isn't it great. Anyway, the main issue here is not technical but human: You don't solve trust issues with your proposals by just adding more pressure to whoever it is that you're trying to get to do something for you.
- aliqot 4y ago> I have yet to see someone implement that feature in a non-hackish way that fully works reliably and future proof on all supported robots while also not introducing crippling technical debt that will hurt the project in the long run. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. BDFL starts with the letter B.
- KomoD 4y agoLooking at the repo, hypfer does seem like kind of an asshat.
- dang 4y agoPlease don't cross into personal attacks. Even if you didn't owe people you feel are asshats better, you owe this community better if you're participating in it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- archi42 4y agoThis might have been an inside joke, since the attack is very specific: The main dev, Hypfer, was called an asshat in a very similar tone by an anonymous GitHub user once; this sometimes surfaces as a kind of joke in the official Valetudo communication channels. Obviously this context isn't common internet knowledge ;-)
- dang 4y agoAh - unfortunately these things get pattern matched to the dumbest interpretation because it's the most common. Thanks for explaining.
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y agoThis seemed supercool until I got to this part: "Rooting is pretty easy, only requiring a 3.3v USB UART Adapter and almost no disassembly. All warranty seals stay intact." This makes it unusable for normal users. Which is a pity and a solution should be legal, not technical. Xiaomi sells their hardware at very attractive prices and people discover too late it's useless unless connected to servers in China.
- brnt 4y agoFWIW: the Dreame W10 I just bought works fine without connecting it to anything.
- fxtentacle 4y ago> Xiaomi sells their hardware at very attractive prices and people discover too late it's useless unless connected to servers in China. It's even worse than that. Privacy-conscious people might try to buy from German brands like a Miele Scout SX3 or a MEDION MD19500. But both of them are just white-labeled Chinese products and use the 114.114.114.114 DNS resolver in Beijing.
- nicolaslem 4y agoMaybe it is wishful thinking but I predict that within a decade cloud-only appliances will be illegal for three reasons: - Users will get tired of having their expensive gadgets being bricked because the cloud part was decommissioned. - Right to repair laws and environmental regulations will require appliances to have longer lives. - National security.
- paulcarroty 4y ago> This makes it unusable for normal users. Once upon a time have flashed OpenWrt as normal user, nothing extraordinary.
- beebeepka 4y agoAre there modern robot vacuum cleaners without the smart crap? Ours is like a decade old and I just can't imagine myself using a damn phone to control appliances. Aw geez, I guess that's what getting old is like
- brnt 4y agoI never set them up, seems to work well for me so far.
- j1elo 4y agoCurious to see that this is mostly JavaScript code. How does it work on the technical side? Does the modified firmware include a whole Node.js environment that runs this code?
- hypfer 4y agohttps://github.com/vercel/pkg https://github.com/vercel/pkg
- j1elo 4y agoI see! I use pkg too myself, and now that I knew what to look for, was able to find the "pkg" entries in package.json
- hypfer 4y agoI continue to be amazed at how good that works. Both pkg but also running a full nodejs runtime on a 256MB RAM vacuum robot with a comically small heap size alongside the regular firmware.
- j1elo 4y agoYeah it is a very nice technology, and also working on a higher level than embedded C/C++ allows for a faster development cycle, not having to worry that much about handling memory manually (albeit incurring in a much higher usage, that's true)
- fxtentacle 4y agoIt uses pkg node18-linuxstatic-armv7
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- netsharc 4y agoThe other day there was a thread about the PS4 controller and a commenter said he was amazed that a game controller needs to boot up (compare that to the classic Nintendo controller). Now I'm amazed that a vacuum cleaner also has a boot-up procedure...
- fxtentacle 4y agoIt has 3 separate Linux systems running. One for hardware g control, one in the docking station, one main OS doing app interface and planning
- Rebelgecko 4y agoThese smart vacuums typically have all kinds of RF stuff like wifi and a host of sensors like lidar, IR, and sometimes cameras Probably closer to a self driving car than a manual vacuum.
- 29athrowaway 4y agoValetudo means "everything is valid" in Portuguese and is also a mixed martial arts thing.
- dang 4y agoRelated: Valetudo: Open-source cloud replacement for vacuum robots - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31665872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31665872 - June 2022 (89 comments) Valetudo is a cloud-free web interface for robot vacuum cleaners - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25856788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25856788 - Jan 2021 (20 comments)