Valetudo – Cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabling local-only operation

This project tries to both be open source and accessible to regular people. And it kinda succeeds :)<p>For the end users, there&#x27;s a telegram group where people can share standardised PCBs for rooting common robots sold in Europe. And the project&#x27;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.<p>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&#x27;re a power user, you&#x27;ll probably run your own fork.<p>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&#x27;m extremely happy with my (private, unsupported) fork running on 2x Dreame W10.

I&#x27;ve been using this on my Dreame Z10 pro for over a year now, and it&#x27;s been great. I will never buy a robot vacuum that doesn&#x27;t have valetudo compatibility (or similar in case an alternative ever shows up I suppose).<p>While I haven&#x27;t done much with it yet, I also appreciate the relatively straightforward HomeAssistant integration.

Answering the burning question: no, Roomba hardware is locked up and not supported.[1]<p>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&#x2F;replace collection bag.)<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;valetudo.cloud&#x2F;pages&#x2F;general&#x2F;supported-robots.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;valetudo.cloud&#x2F;pages&#x2F;general&#x2F;supported-robots.html</a>

There&#x27;s a very recent talk that they did at 37c3 that you can watch, if you&#x27;re interested in the process of them gaining root on the various platforms [1][2]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;events.ccc.de&#x2F;congress&#x2F;2023&#x2F;hub&#x2F;en&#x2F;event&#x2F;sucking_dust_and_cutting_grass_reversing_robots_and_bypassing_security&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;events.ccc.de&#x2F;congress&#x2F;2023&#x2F;hub&#x2F;en&#x2F;event&#x2F;sucking_dus...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;streaming.media.ccc.de&#x2F;37c3&#x2F;relive&#x2F;11943" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;streaming.media.ccc.de&#x2F;37c3&#x2F;relive&#x2F;11943</a>

&gt; 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. &gt; Please don’t disappoint me. Thank you.<p>Valetudo is a perfect example of a project at risks of <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Tivoization" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Tivoization</a> - OEMs can easily slap it onto their vacuums and prevent users and developers from changing the firmware.<p>This is exactly what GPLv3 was invented for.

Direct link to the list of supported robots: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;valetudo.cloud&#x2F;pages&#x2F;general&#x2F;supported-robots.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;valetudo.cloud&#x2F;pages&#x2F;general&#x2F;supported-robots.html</a>

I 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.<p>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.

My 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).<p>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.

A 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&#x2F;being super loud, same with drying racks. Is this still a problem? I thought maybe those vision&#x2F;lidar robots can avoid climbing the tubes.

It’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.<p>Checkout the telegram channels. Watch the maintainer yell at people, call them names, and watch the supporters eat it up.

&gt; rooting and installing Valetudo is a pretty much permanent change.<p>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.

This is amazing, I wish it had support for Ecovacs too

I couldn’t find how to run Valetudo on iOS which is sad since my native app is too slow sometimes.

It only supports old models and most of the time requires complicated full disassembly and breakout boards&#x2F;PCB knowledge. Of course great that this exists, but this isn&#x27;t for the &quot;average&quot; advanced users.

Love the section &quot;Valetudo is a garden&quot;<p>&quot;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.<p>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.<p>There is simply no ground to stand on to demand change to the garden.&quot;

Hey 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.<p>Matic builds full matterport like 3D map just using CV. This enables Matic to Precisely navigate without bumping at all.<p>We have built 10x better vSLAM than the best open source lib like Orb SLAM.<p>AMA.

I 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.

The name comes from &quot;Vale tudo&quot; (tudo = all, vale = valid). Vale tudo are martial art events where any fighting style is allowed with very few rules. The precursor of MMA.