Valetudo – Free your vacuum cleaner from the cloud | Hacker News Reader

Valetudo – Free your vacuum cleaner from the cloud

github.com

110 pointspaulcarroty45 comments

Curious 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?

https://github.com/vercel/pkg

I 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

I 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.

Yeah 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)

It uses pkg node18-linuxstatic-armv7

The 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...

These 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.

It has 3 separate Linux systems running. One for hardware g control, one in the docking station, one main OS doing app interface and planning

Are 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

I never set them up, seems to work well for me so far.

Valetudo: Open-source cloud replacement for vacuum robots - 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 - Jan 2021 (20 comments)

This 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.

> 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.

Maybe 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.

FWIW: the Dreame W10 I just bought works fine without connecting it to anything.

> This makes it unusable for normal users.

Once upon a time have flashed OpenWrt as normal user, nothing extraordinary.

Valetudo means "everything is valid" in Portuguese and is also a mixed martial arts thing.

Great 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.

I 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.

I 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

You 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.

I 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.

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.

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.

> 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.

No, I fully agree with hypfer that merging any of those multi-map hacks would be a nightmare.

Pretty much each robot vacuum is different and Valetudo does a great job of abstracting away the differences. Even on a 2nd robot of the exact same model, my fork would just break. Using those miio commands with pre-known map_ids really is a super fragile hack.

Also, adding multi-floor support surely took way more working time than the financial equivalent of buying a 2nd robot. It also doesn't make sense financially. I mostly just added it because my kid likes carrying the robot around ^^ Plus with LEGO all over the floor in pretty much every room, we can't automate any cleaning anyway.

Well at the end of the day, yours truly will be responsible to clean up that mess. Why would I do that? Why would I consciously move into a situation that will be harmful to me?

Also, the project is in a great state with lots of options in regards to robots. If you have multiple floors, just buy a second robot used for 60€

Why add any risk whatsoever just to save 60€? It makes no sense. It's a downright terrible idea to do that.

I'm saying this to provoke you, and possibly push you toward the light, so please don't take too much offense, but do help yourself to some: Do you have any preference for what the community will call the open fork of your project?

I must add a sidenote because I didn't anticipate it reading as such a scathing rebuke as when it was conceived but, your behavior might be earned, you might be the Linus of motor-bins, but like the way you're acting here in front of your target audience is pretty much like every other BDFL who turned on their community.

You are blessed that anybody shows any interest in submitting any code to your project, and I'm not saying that means you have to go merging every CoC that lands in your PR's, but I am saying that even though someone may be misguided, or may not share your vision, it doesn't mean they lack the potential to be swayed.

obviously you know your stuff on motor-bins, and obviously you're passionate about that. Rather than ignoring and then shunning those who are incongruent in their vision, perhaps you could mentor them on the things you've learned over this time about what makes their idea suck.

last but not least, when someone's giving you unsolicited advice that sounds like complete and utter shite, you respond with "thanks, I'll take that into consideration and keep it in mind". The dev equivalent of that is merge it to a branch, let them polish that turd until they succeed or fail, and then you can be validated in both cases and you've not alienated anybody.

The way you act today, since I've been here about ohhh 2006ish maybe, is in line with every other BDFL who watched their project flourish as a fork instead. You might be cool with that, idk, we only just met, but if that is something you're cool with, you should be up front about that.

Ah yes. The many very successful and super polished streamlined community-driven and well supported forks. That will surely happen. Especially when being born out of unreasonable rage about the lack of one specific minor feature with better solutions available for little additional cost.

Surely in that fork, people will contribute more than just the bare minimum to scratch their itch. Hell, most users will likely be super motivated highly skilled developers that really want to move the world forward with their selfless contributions. No shitcode. No hidden agenda. No corporate takeover. Just higher ideals. Most definitely it will be the land of milk and honey. The only thing denying users this bliss is the evil maintainer.

Jesus man. I encourage you to run a FOSS project for a while. Especially one in the consumer electronics space. I'm sure it will change your perspective on this.

This is exactly the view most of the world has about PrismLauncher for Minecraft; A little UI reorganization and rainbows = land of milk and honey. Nevermind all the FUD being spread about the old project having "malware" in it.

Meanwhile, PolyMC still chugs along with updates and features.

Well, in my case I consider myself a "super motivated highly skilled developer" and I was feeling eager to help the project along ... and it seems we started out on the wrong foot for that to ever happen, which may (or may not) have worked out differently with a different project organization structure.

aliqot is clearly too optimistic, but your argument here might be a bit too pessimistic.

That said, my own experience with offering open source projects was also pretty miserable, due to hidden agendas and corporate takeover.

> Jesus man. I encourage you to run a FOSS project for a while. Especially one in the consumer electronics space. I'm sure it will change your perspective on this.

What traits have led you to believe I don't?

for me, it's the basic presumptions you're making in your posts, the vague fork threats when your ideas are challenged, and the way you hand-wave previous controversies such as weaponized-CoC's.

All of which make me think you haven't run a FOSS project. And if you did, I bet it went swimmingly.

You'd be incorrect. On the order of years.

Great, the usual fork threat in pseudo-friendly language. Religious terminology thrown in.

People don't have unlimited time and can't react to every PR. Most projects that take too many PRs devolve into a buggy mess that is only propped up by the "community".

Why would I expose my vaccuum cleaner to such software?

If only this response came from your first account that I was speaking to directly.

The letter "B" is usually a euphemism. Like real world dictators, those who let themselves be called "benevolent" by their followers are the worst politicians.

I can't believe I got a Telegram message (by a person unknown to me) trying to confront me about this a day later... Everyone, please calm down, our disagreement was merely about communication style!

The presumed "abuse" was posting these 2 screenshots https://github.com/DeutscheKI/dreame-w10-valetudo-fork/blob/... https://github.com/DeutscheKI/dreame-w10-valetudo-fork/blob/... into this https://t.me/+uGuDHt0dNCVmODli telegram group with a polite but lengthy text about which UI changes were made between this fork https://github.com/DeutscheKI/dreame-w10-valetudo-fork and this master branch https://github.com/Hypfer/Valetudo/ and what the motivations for each UI decision were.

That Telegram group has 1000+ users. But Hyper found it annoying that I @ tagged him in that message. That's it - no need for pitchforks :)

Everyone, please calm down, our disagreement was merely about communication style !!!!!one1111oneone!1!!11!one1!

Sorry, that was not my intention.

I posted the screenshots to the Telegram group because you had written before that you are only interested in seeing forks that bring new ideas. And I thought the fact that I redesigned the map and settings screens to make them more user-friendly would make for an interesting perspective.

Valetudo 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?

https://github.com/DeutscheKI/dreame-w10-valetudo-fork

Looking at the repo, hypfer does seem like kind of an asshat.

Please 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

This 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 ;-)

Ah - unfortunately these things get pattern matched to the dumbest interpretation because it's the most common. Thanks for explaining.

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