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>it seemed that Chinese robot vacuums were light years ahead. They are. Xiaomi owned Roborock is years ahead of the big western competition (iRobot and Neato)

>it seemed that Chinese robot vacuums were light years ahead. They are. Xiaomi owned Roborock is years ahead of the big western competition (iRobot and Neato) in terms of cleaning chops and value for money. Privacy though, is another matter that never gets benchmarked, but there's also no guarantee yet that the lesser western brands will pinky promise to keep your data private and not sell it to advertisers for money or leave it in some insecure S3 bucket for hackers to steal because they outsourced the SW dev work to the cheapest body shop, which is the norm in SW development for consumer electronics. At least on most Roborock models you can root them and run them locally via Valetudo insted of their proprietary cloud, so you get the best of all worlds: cleaning, value, privacy.

guepe 3y ago
I have two (vacuum and mop) and I’m happy with them. Slow ? Yes. Who cares it gets done in the day while I work ! Effective: yes.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Rebelgecko 3y ago
iRobot is catching up to their Chinese competitors in many ways, including privacy concerns. Just last year one of their contractors posted a picture taken by a vacuum of a woman going to the bathroom. In iRobot's (IMO weak) defense, the woman or someone in her household had opted into third party data sharing In practice, how is it to actually run Valetudo on a Roborock? I have one of the supported models but quickly noped out when I skimmed through the "short these jumpers on the PCB" part of the installation instructions
downWidOutaFite 3y ago
What is the threat from someone having an approximate floor plan of where you live?
- michaelt 3y ago
  https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/10/1066500/roomba-irobot-robot-vacuum-beta-product-testers-consent-agreement-misled/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/10/1066500/roomba-i... > Roomba testers feel misled after intimate images ended up on Facebook [...] Robot would share test users’ data in a sprawling, global data supply chain, where everything (and every person) captured by the devices’ front-facing cameras could be seen, and perhaps annotated, by low-paid contractors outside the United States who could screenshot and share images at their will. [...] These workers then shared at least 15 images—including shots of a minor and of a woman sitting on the toilet—to social media groups where they gathered to talk shop. To be fair, when the photo of a woman taking a shit was shared on facebook, her face was blurred. Once something is online there's also the (less important but perhaps more likely) risk they'll send software updates that remove features, add adverts, force you to set up an account, and other nonsense like that.
- InitialLastName 3y ago
  See comment above: > Just last year one of their contractors posted a picture taken by a vacuum of a woman going to the bathroom. It's not just a floor plan, it's a video overview of everything in your living space.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >It's not just a floor plan, it's a video overview of everything in your living space. Most robo-vacs don't have cameras, but lidar/IR sensors so all they get is a 2D map of your floorplan, not video footage.
    - downWidOutaFite 3y ago
      Yea mine is just LIDAR. What feature would it need video for?
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        Some fancier models use cameras for obstacle detection and avoidance. They try to identify stuff than chokes and clogs the robovacs so they can avoid them, like socks, USB cables or Lego on the floor, or my personal favorite, pet poop. There was a funny video on social media, of a home surveillance camera capturing the pet taking a dump in the middle of the living room, and then the Roomba smearing it everywhere as it did its rounds. If you're a pet owner who's companion can do their business in your house, having the robovac smear it everywhere is a nightmare you'd want to avoid at all cost, and that can only be solved using cameras.
Aissen 3y ago
> Privacy though, is another matter that never gets benchmarked, One of the reason I never connected my Neato is that I had no interest in having a map of my flat uploaded to the company's servers.
nacho2sweet 3y ago
Do we think an amazon owned iRobot wasn't going to use the computer vision to catalogue all the shit I owned in my house and suggest things I am missing lol...
JohnFen 3y ago
> Privacy though, is another matter that never gets benchmarked Privacy is why I would never own a vacuum (or most any other device) that requires an internet connection. For me, the only benchmark required is "does it have to connect to a server somewhere to work?"
marcinzm 3y ago
> Privacy though, is another matter that never gets benchmarked, The newest Roborock vacuums don’t even have cameras. On purpose. Unlike iRobot. So it seems China is actually ahead in privacy. Which is sad.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Privacy is not a cameras or no-cameras dependent binary. You still need to use their apps to control the robots, and the apps send the commands to the robot only through their proprietary clouds instead of directly. You can't tell me with a straight face that means privacy.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    > Privacy is not a cameras or no-cameras dependent binary. If it has no camera and no microphone, the worst case leak is way better than what iRobot has already been caught doing: (The toilette videos) https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1065306/roomba-irobot-robot-vacuums-artificial-intelligence-training-data-privacy/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1065306/roomba-i...
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      Sure, but that's like saying being punched in the face is better than being punched in the nuts.
      - marcinzm 3y ago
        You have yet to say why. Making random hyperboles and sounding angry isn't an argument, it's a tantrum.
        FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        Just saying one is way worse than the other, even though they're both still bad, what more do you want? It's obvious to everyone.
izacus 3y ago
I had Roborock with a camera and it had more privacy protections that I've seen in Roomba - the camera remote access was locked out, when cameras was on it had a loud "recording" warning, the API worked locally from app to the vac (which is not the case for iRobot), the map was stored on the robot itself, etc. Kind of surprising, but it also got me thinking about how many of those options aren't available in western products.

guepe 3y ago

I have two (vacuum and mop) and I’m happy with them. Slow ? Yes. Who cares it gets done in the day while I work ! Effective: yes.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Rebelgecko 3y ago

iRobot is catching up to their Chinese competitors in many ways, including privacy concerns. Just last year one of their contractors posted a picture taken by a vacuum of a woman going to the bathroom. In iRobot's (IMO weak) defense, the woman or someone in her household had opted into third party data sharing In practice, how is it to actually run Valetudo on a Roborock? I have one of the supported models but quickly noped out when I skimmed through the "short these jumpers on the PCB" part of the installation instructions

downWidOutaFite 3y ago

What is the threat from someone having an approximate floor plan of where you live?

michaelt 3y ago
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/10/1066500/roomba-irobot-robot-vacuum-beta-product-testers-consent-agreement-misled/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/10/1066500/roomba-i... > Roomba testers feel misled after intimate images ended up on Facebook [...] Robot would share test users’ data in a sprawling, global data supply chain, where everything (and every person) captured by the devices’ front-facing cameras could be seen, and perhaps annotated, by low-paid contractors outside the United States who could screenshot and share images at their will. [...] These workers then shared at least 15 images—including shots of a minor and of a woman sitting on the toilet—to social media groups where they gathered to talk shop. To be fair, when the photo of a woman taking a shit was shared on facebook, her face was blurred. Once something is online there's also the (less important but perhaps more likely) risk they'll send software updates that remove features, add adverts, force you to set up an account, and other nonsense like that.
InitialLastName 3y ago
See comment above: > Just last year one of their contractors posted a picture taken by a vacuum of a woman going to the bathroom. It's not just a floor plan, it's a video overview of everything in your living space.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >It's not just a floor plan, it's a video overview of everything in your living space. Most robo-vacs don't have cameras, but lidar/IR sensors so all they get is a 2D map of your floorplan, not video footage.
  - downWidOutaFite 3y ago
    Yea mine is just LIDAR. What feature would it need video for?
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      Some fancier models use cameras for obstacle detection and avoidance. They try to identify stuff than chokes and clogs the robovacs so they can avoid them, like socks, USB cables or Lego on the floor, or my personal favorite, pet poop. There was a funny video on social media, of a home surveillance camera capturing the pet taking a dump in the middle of the living room, and then the Roomba smearing it everywhere as it did its rounds. If you're a pet owner who's companion can do their business in your house, having the robovac smear it everywhere is a nightmare you'd want to avoid at all cost, and that can only be solved using cameras.

Aissen 3y ago

> Privacy though, is another matter that never gets benchmarked, One of the reason I never connected my Neato is that I had no interest in having a map of my flat uploaded to the company's servers.

nacho2sweet 3y ago

Do we think an amazon owned iRobot wasn't going to use the computer vision to catalogue all the shit I owned in my house and suggest things I am missing lol...

JohnFen 3y ago

> Privacy though, is another matter that never gets benchmarked Privacy is why I would never own a vacuum (or most any other device) that requires an internet connection. For me, the only benchmark required is "does it have to connect to a server somewhere to work?"

marcinzm 3y ago

> Privacy though, is another matter that never gets benchmarked, The newest Roborock vacuums don’t even have cameras. On purpose. Unlike iRobot. So it seems China is actually ahead in privacy. Which is sad.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
Privacy is not a cameras or no-cameras dependent binary. You still need to use their apps to control the robots, and the apps send the commands to the robot only through their proprietary clouds instead of directly. You can't tell me with a straight face that means privacy.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  > Privacy is not a cameras or no-cameras dependent binary. If it has no camera and no microphone, the worst case leak is way better than what iRobot has already been caught doing: (The toilette videos) https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1065306/roomba-irobot-robot-vacuums-artificial-intelligence-training-data-privacy/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1065306/roomba-i...
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Sure, but that's like saying being punched in the face is better than being punched in the nuts.
    - marcinzm 3y ago
      You have yet to say why. Making random hyperboles and sounding angry isn't an argument, it's a tantrum.
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        Just saying one is way worse than the other, even though they're both still bad, what more do you want? It's obvious to everyone.

izacus 3y ago

I had Roborock with a camera and it had more privacy protections that I've seen in Roomba - the camera remote access was locked out, when cameras was on it had a loud "recording" warning, the API worked locally from app to the vac (which is not the case for iRobot), the map was stored on the robot itself, etc. Kind of surprising, but it also got me thinking about how many of those options aren't available in western products.