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Valetudo – Cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabling local-only operation
- hypherisabitch 3y ago[flagged]
- 29athrowaway 3y agoThe name comes from "Vale tudo" (tudo = all, vale = valid). Vale tudo are martial art events where any fighting style is allowed with very few rules. The precursor of MMA.
- osmano807 3y agoFrom their FAQ https://valetudo.cloud/pages/faq.html https://valetudo.cloud/pages/faq.html Valetudo is the roman name for the greek goddess Hygieia, which is the goddess of health, cleanliness and hygiene.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoAh, you got me. I didn't consider that other alternative meaning.
- SargeDebian 3y agoAnd you just stated to know where the name came from, even though you made it up instead of looking it up.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoAs said in the comment you replied to, it was a good faith mistake on my part, due to not knowing the alternate meanings of the word.
- jagthebeetle 3y agoTangentially, "valetudo" is just "health" (which may contextually connote _good_ or _bad_ health): https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0059:entry=valetudo https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1... We get "valetudinarian" from this word, one who worries (excessively) about one's health.
- cfn 3y agoIt means "anything goes" in portuguese but maybe it is a coincidence.
- MostlyStable 3y agoI've been using this on my Dreame Z10 pro for over a year now, and it's been great. I will never buy a robot vacuum that doesn't have valetudo compatibility (or similar in case an alternative ever shows up I suppose). While I haven't done much with it yet, I also appreciate the relatively straightforward HomeAssistant integration.
- nsagent 3y agoI also have the Dreame Z10 Pro. Valetudo and https://dontvacuum.me/ https://dontvacuum.me/ are wonderful resources! I can't speak highly enough of them. Really appreciate all the hard work that went into making rooting robot vacuums with privacy-preserving firmware possible.
- rbut 3y agoA question for both of you. Did you make your own Dreame Breakout PCB, or did you buy one from someone, or did you wire in directly?
- MostlyStable 3y agoWhen I did it, it just required plugging wires into the port. The only difficulty I had was that it was a slightly unusual spacing so I struggled slightly to stick the jumper wires in, but after that it worked fine. Have subsequent Z10s changed this? Ok after reading the docs, it looks like that board specifically fixes the non standard pitch. I managed without it, but I did have some difficulties with poor connection that the board would have avoided
- nsagent 3y agoYeah, that was my same experience. It was a tight fit, but certainly doable.
- BHSPitMonkey 3y agoI just poked wires in.
- gumballindie 3y ago[flagged]
- aksss 3y agoThe impetus is people wanting a robot to vacuum. That should be pretty easy to understand. They have become cloud enabled. Options for a reputable alternative with automation integration not well known, certainly to mass consumer market.
- HatchedLake721 3y agoWhy not?
- lacrimacida 3y ago(1)Lack of control for one. (2) Planned obsolescence when the service stops working. (3) bricking after unneeded updates. (…)I could go on why cloud service enabled products are on my “avoid as much as you can” list. For backups and things for which it makes sense it’s a different story but there too one has to pay attention who the cloud provider is and what they do with your bits.
- eichin 3y agoBecause above a certain feature and price level (self-emptying and persistent mapping, for example) they aren't made without cloud support, by anyone? At least the roborock S7 (a) doesn't require you to actually set up any of the cloud features, you can still just push a button and it Does The Thing (b) is supported by valetudo, and generally kind of hackable. But the general market hasn't rejected it, even with the irobot image leaks...
- jojobas 3y agoCloud support - fine. Cloud requirement to be of any use - one should only buy it if he's ok with a Chinese company knowing his name, where he lives, when he's at home and when not, which room is the kids', and pretty much everything else.
- aksss 3y agoAnswering the burning question: no, Roomba hardware is locked up and not supported.[1] But this is really awesome. I don’t love the idea of Roomba having a floor plan of my house and constantly prompting me to buy more crap directly in-app, and HA integration is fantastic. Would allow for far more dynamic scheduling for one thing (everyone out of the house? Get to it! Prioritize this room over that one. People arriving back? Head back to base. Night before garbage day? Notify me to empty/replace collection bag.) [1] https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/supported-robots.html https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/supported-robots.html
- jojobas 3y agoDoes Roomba have any physical/sensor/whatever advantage over supported models, either absolute or bank/buck?
- dharmab 3y agoRoombas tend to be better at cleaning carpets and rugs. They're also designed for service- it's really easy to clear jams and untangle hair, and they last many years. Many of the competitors at lower price points are essentially disposable devices. One of their models is the only decent vacuum that can automatically avoid pet faeces.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- eastbound 3y agoMore importantly, Roomba charges per square meter covered (by tier obviously). While it is resting most of the day and could well cover another floor, it’s a feature the base models don’t have. Let’s say this option costs 100€. Should all users of Valetudo donate 100€?
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoI'm sorry, WHAT? I need to pay extra to have my Roomba clean all the rooms?
- rsweeney21 3y agoLove the section "Valetudo is a garden" "But, at the end of the day, you must understand that it is still privately-owned. You’re on someone else’s property over which you have no power at all. You will have to show the necessary respect. And - most importantly - you need to understand that letting you into this garden is a gift and should be treated as such. If you don’t like this garden because you don’t like how it’s structured, or you feel like it’s missing something, or maybe I choose the wrong flowers to plant over there that’s fine. It’s just not for you then. You can leave at any time. There is simply no ground to stand on to demand change to the garden."
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- po 3y agoI was going to comment the same thing... it's a lovely metaphor and you can see it comes from the experience of someone who has been through it before. Despite being about private property, I still think this bit of text or something like it should be added to the support page of most OSS projects.
- dr_kiszonka 3y agoHere is my favorite. "Only supported robots are supported While this may sound incredibly dumb, it unfortunately needs saying nonetheless. Only supported robots are supported. Unsupported robots are not supported. If you have an unsupported robot, it is not supported. There is no support for it because it is not supported."
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y agoYou can almost hear the lament of dealing with entitled people in the statement. These are words that originated from having to deal with people who assume that they get free stuff for nothing in return
- m1keil 3y agoWhile this is crystal clear, what isn't clear is what actual robots are officially supported.. For example, the buying recommendations mentions Roborock S8/S8+, but the supported robots page doesn't mention it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- KingLancelot 3y ago[dead]
- deluxeroyale 3y agoI own a Neato Robotics Botvac Connected, and with Neato shutting down, my robots cloud-dependent functions will be useless(remote start, iphone app etc) Unfortunately it’s incompatible with Valetudo. The Chinese $Mi bots I’ve come across lack the suction power I loved about the Neato. I’m in search of a no-nonsense replacement. Any solid suggestions? Dyson one seems nice but way to expensive.
- zzleeper 3y agoI'm on the same boat. My neato is already a bit old (needs new battery and I had to replace a broken belt) but I've been procastinating in finding a replacement as there's just so many options, most of which suck.
- malfist 3y ago> most of which suck I'd hope so, that's kinda the point. But seriously, my house hold just replaced the Roombas with roborock and couldn't be happier
- mehuln 3y agoYep, roborocks have done a great job maximizing disc bots. And like any other Xiomi product, they tend to do slightly better job with software/app.
- zamalek 3y agoI've generally been happy with roborocks, and a few are compatible with valetudo. I haven't used it yet, though, because the rooting process is incredibly complex.
- alexdns 3y agoTake a look at vacuum wars on youtube
- manmal 3y agoLast year I did a lot of research on Reddit and other sites and finally settled on the Roborock S7 Pro Ultra. Some learnings I had along the way: - Software quality is crucial, and new models are often iffy. Badly programmed vacuums (and almost every brand has those) are incredibly annoying, because they get stuck constantly, fall down stairs, leave dirty areas, can’t find the way to the base station, etc. Roborock seems to be one of the few who nails this. - Suction power should be maximized, or you’ll spend time cleaning up after the robot. The S7 I bought has 5100Pa and I think that’s acceptable, but I still need to do two runs sometimes (which is low effort for me, but it means more noise). - Since we wanted a vacuum that also mops: Those mops, if not managed well, get moldy and start to stink after just a few days. Build layout and engineering quality are big factors here - ours almost never stinks even though it has no drying fan (some do). - A base station is needed for real hands-off usage, and those are damn expensive when bought afterwards. And do change the water tanks regularly, they can get quite smelly, fast. It’s the one non-negotiable maintenance we have to do every week. - I was looking for vacuums with explicit mention of HEPA filters, but it seems the more expensive ones have decent filters without ever mentioning HEPA. I’m still not sure what grade the S7 filters really are, but it seems allergy friendly (likely also owed to the mop and the usage of a filter bag in the base station). - Even if the manual says to wash the filter, don’t; they will often degrade. Better to use compressed air (carefully) to clean instead. Overall, we are still happy with the S7 Pro Ultra after a solid year of usage. It’s been a time saver rather than a time sink, and apart from getting stuck sometimes laying around, it has always done a solid job.
- Namidairo 3y agoThere's a very recent talk that they did at 37c3 that you can watch, if you're interested in the process of them gaining root on the various platforms [1][2] [1] https://events.ccc.de/congress/2023/hub/en/event/sucking_dust_and_cutting_grass_reversing_robots_and_bypassing_security/ https://events.ccc.de/congress/2023/hub/en/event/sucking_dus... [2] https://streaming.media.ccc.de/37c3/relive/11943 https://streaming.media.ccc.de/37c3/relive/11943
- mehuln 3y agoHey All, we (maticrobots.com) have built a local-only fully autonomous robot mop and vacuum. We just use 5 RGB cameras with all on the edge device processings. We send even the map data to app using local WiFi. No cloud at all. Matic builds full matterport like 3D map just using CV. This enables Matic to Precisely navigate without bumping at all. We have built 10x better vSLAM than the best open source lib like Orb SLAM. AMA.
- manmal 3y agoHow do you handle changes during a session? Eg legs/cats, chairs being moved etc - are those constantly re-integrated in the map?
- mehuln 3y agoMatic keeps both static (historical map) and dynamic constant live mapping. So it constantly observes changes live all the time — just the way we do. And it keeps merging these changes in the slam graph/maps.
- rmeno12 3y agoWould you please expand on your VSLAM improvements? What other implementations are you comparing against and on what metrics/settings?
- mehuln 3y agoThe latest NN based approaches still fall short of ORB-SLAM - which is considered the state of the art (in terms implementations). However, it still has only 70% success rate in loop closures. We tend to measure our accuracy with loop closures and slam graph consistency over time. Here’s the link of Matic self and exploring and building map on the fly: https://www.dropbox.com/s/e051nmb1ci0o8nu/Auto_Explore_Mehul_Home.mp4?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/e051nmb1ci0o8nu/Auto_Explore_Mehul...
- ranguna 3y agoIs that sped up ?
- toxictraits 3y ago[flagged]
- lovehurts73 3y ago[flagged]
- malwarebytess 3y agoSo what? It's a great piece of software, for free.
- fhsixkkk 3y ago[flagged]
- VeninVidiaVicii 3y agoI read these comments and was very confused for a good while; somehow I thought there was a new kind of cloud robot that vacuumed your SQL databases for you.
- poisonborz 3y agoIt only supports old models and most of the time requires complicated full disassembly and breakout boards/PCB knowledge. Of course great that this exists, but this isn't for the "average" advanced users.
- ortichic 3y agoDefine "old"
- PeterStuer 3y agoDirect link to the list of supported robots: https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/supported-robots.html https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/supported-robots.html
- joshstrange 3y agoNot sure if that’s up to date? Roborock S8 Pro Ultra is listed on the page of buying supported robots but it’s not on the supported robots page? That’s the one I have and I’m interested in Valetudo for hooking into HA but I wish there was an iOS app for it.
- csnweb 3y agoIt’s extremely hard to root, I think that’s why it got removed from the supported robot page. As for ios, just saving the page on the Home Screen really works fine, no need for a native app here imho.
- fxtentacle 3y agoThis project tries to both be open source and accessible to regular people. And it kinda succeeds :) For the end users, there's a telegram group where people can share standardised PCBs for rooting common robots sold in Europe. And the project's main developer is even in there actively helping out. But discussion about forks or custom PCBs is frowned upon, as that would only confuse the non-devs. On the developer side, thought, making things easy and standardised required some trade-offs like not supporting any robot-specific functionality. That means if you're a power user, you'll probably run your own fork. So in a way, installing Valetudo moves you from a Chinese closed-source walled garden into a European source-available walled garden. That said, I'm extremely happy with my (private, unsupported) fork running on 2x Dreame W10.
- rhim 3y agoI wouldn't say that soldering a pcb [0][1] yourself is beginner-friendly but I understand your argument. Some robots are unfortunately still very difficult to root (which is not valetudos fault), which makes getting started with the project very cumbersome. [0] https://valetudo.cloud/pages/installation/dreame.html https://valetudo.cloud/pages/installation/dreame.html [1] https://github.com/Hypfer/valetudo-dreameadapter https://github.com/Hypfer/valetudo-dreameadapter
- moooo99 3y agoI think beginner-friendly is kind of relative. Considering the end goal, you're tying to achieve (hack the robot to run your custom software), requiring a user to solder a relatively simple board is a very accessible requirement.
- plagiarist 3y agoI might be fine with soldering. But it's a completely different skill than running the software to flash something, I can see how it would put people off.
- jackweirdy 3y agoThe telegram group has a bunch of people (including myself) willing to mail pre-made ones, or the unsoldered PCBs for self solder. It has become quite a community around the software and breakout hardware in itself
- vldmrs 3y agoI couldn’t find how to run Valetudo on iOS which is sad since my native app is too slow sometimes.
- LeanderK 3y agoA bit offtopic, but I really like bauhaus-style cantilever chairs but I always had problems with robots wanting to climb them and then getting stuck/being super loud, same with drying racks. Is this still a problem? I thought maybe those vision/lidar robots can avoid climbing the tubes.
- Epa095 3y agoMy roborock S6 with camera and lidar tries to climb my POÄNG chair.
- goodpoint 3y ago> The Apache-2.0 license is a very permissive license and a lot of work is being shared for free here, so I trust people to not take advantage of that and sell Valetudo; especially not as their own work. > Please don’t disappoint me. Thank you. Valetudo is a perfect example of a project at risks of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization - OEMs can easily slap it onto their vacuums and prevent users and developers from changing the firmware. This is exactly what GPLv3 was invented for.
- phs318u 3y agoYes. It is almost guaranteed that the code from this project will be used in exactly the way this person fears. Why not use the GPL if you don't want that to happen? Why instead try and beg people to not "disappoint" you? I find it hard to understand why people expect others to 'do right by them', when they aren't prepared to do right by their self (e.g. by choosing a license better fitting your expectation).
- goodpoint 3y agoSome large tech companies have been carrying on a smear campaign against GPL...
- vikeri 3y agoThis is amazing, I wish it had support for Ecovacs too
- archi42 3y agoDennis Giese - the guy who did & published many of the actual vacuum roots - actually did a talk at 37c3, just yesterday! Together with Braelynn he published rooting methods for Ecovacs. Expect easy & comfortable root using the UART debug connector. Valetudo support seems to be coming, however "it's done when it's done"; the necessary work is more dramatic due to the different protocol Ecovacs uses for cloud communication. Until then: I would make sure not to update the device firmware. Just be prepared to wait and keep an eye on the release notes and/or Valetudo webpage (unlike with other projects, you can safely assume it to be up to date).
- tamimio 3y ago> rooting and installing Valetudo is a pretty much permanent change. As much as I like the project and appreciate its concept, but this is a deal breaker unless your robot is out of warranty, because you will be under the mercy of some random developer instead of the vendor.
- meohmywow 3y agoIt’s great to be able to de-cloud. But the community, especially the maintainer of Valetudo, is terrible. Literally everyone is rude every step of the way. Checkout the telegram channels. Watch the maintainer yell at people, call them names, and watch the supporters eat it up.
- nicbou 3y agoMy little robot vacuum has been running Valetudo from day one. It has been rock solid. I literally never use the UI, as I just press a button and let the little puck do its thing (while talking like Glados from Portal). I just like that thanks to this, my robot vacuum works like a standalone device that does not communicate with anything, yet does exactly what it should.