[HN Gopher] Valetudo - Cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabl...
___________________________________________________________________
Valetudo - Cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabling local-only
operation
Author : philo23
Score : 422 points
Date : 2023-12-27 23:51 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (valetudo.cloud)
(TXT) w3m dump (valetudo.cloud)
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| From their FAQ 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 wrote:
| Ah, you got me. I didn't consider that other alternative
| meaning.
| SargeDebian wrote:
| And you just stated to know where the name came from, even
| though you made it up instead of looking it up.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| As 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 wrote:
| Tangentially, "valetudo" is just "health" (which may
| contextually connote _good_ or _bad_ health): https://www.per
| seus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1...
|
| We get "valetudinarian" from this word, one who worries
| (excessively) about one's health.
| cfn wrote:
| It means "anything goes" in portuguese but maybe it is a
| coincidence.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| I also have the Dreame Z10 Pro. Valetudo and
| 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 wrote:
| A 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 wrote:
| When 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 wrote:
| Yeah, that was my same experience. It was a tight fit,
| but certainly doable.
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| I just poked wires in.
| rhim wrote:
| I currently have the same problem, I would like to root my
| dreame roboter, but unfortunately I can't get the
| components for the dreame PCB, or nobody sells me a ready
| soldered dreame PCB. Too bad there is no alternative, but
| that makes it really hard for people with a dreame robot to
| use the project.
| matthew-wegner wrote:
| Also chiming in that wiring in directly is easy. There are
| two types of Dreame rooting:
|
| * Connects to robot's serial port. You'll need a USB-to-TTL
| cable if you don't have one around to connect to your
| computer. Z10 Pro uses this method.
|
| * Connects to robot's USB port (still via the debug
| header). You'll need three of the four wires from a USB
| cable. You can literally cut open a USB cable here, or get
| a breakout board. L10s Ultra uses this method.
|
| Plus misc jumper wires to connect it all. The boot button
| is connecting a wire to boot select, a wire to ground, and
| touching these wires together (really, the PCB is all three
| of these things: boot button + serial + direct USB).
| pkulak wrote:
| I almost pulled the trigger on the Z10, then got worried I'd
| just brick it and backed out. Now it's not even available.
| Hopefully there will be another no-solder option soon.
| smith7018 wrote:
| I've used it on my Roborock S5 for at least 4 years now and
| love it. It used to be a little unstable (something like it
| uninstalling itself if the battery dies for too long) but
| hasn't had any issues in years. I, like you, will never buy an
| unsupported vacuum again :)
| aksss wrote:
| Answering 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
| jojobas wrote:
| Does Roomba have any physical/sensor/whatever advantage over
| supported models, either absolute or bank/buck?
| dharmab wrote:
| Roombas 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.
| eastbound wrote:
| More 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 100EUR. Should all users of
| Valetudo donate 100EUR?
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| I'm sorry, WHAT? I need to pay extra to have my Roomba clean
| all the rooms?
| dharmab wrote:
| I own two Roombas and have never heard of this.
| noduerme wrote:
| I wasn't aware of this either (if it's not a joke)... if
| so, it would be right up there with HP printers refusing to
| scan if you don't buy ink.
| malfist wrote:
| GP is incorrect. Roomba does not charge by sqft
| avarun wrote:
| They seem to be implying that the different tiers of Roomba
| robots are differentiated by how much square footage they
| can clean in a session, not that Roomba literally has a
| usage based pricing model. I don't know how they came to
| that conclusion though.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Not yet, but this is the future. After all, people don't
| want vacuum cleaners, they want clean apartments, cleaning
| is a service, and other such self-aggrandizing business
| bullshit. Welcome to the future!
| dharmab wrote:
| I think you're confused. The sqft is roughly how much they
| can cover in one go before either the bin is full or the
| battery is low. You can configure your Roomba to do multiple
| cleaning jobs in a day, each cleaning certain rooms on that
| floor. Or just pick up the vac, put it down anywhere in the
| house, and press the button.
| cyberax wrote:
| Roombas are well-supported in HA, and they can use the local
| network connection. You still need to use the Roomba app to set
| up the robots, but afterwards they can work completely locally.
| aksss wrote:
| Do they work completely locally or just without the Roomba
| app? I mean, if you prevent the i-series from phoning home,
| does it still work? I guess I could test this pretty easily,
| but frankly will be pleasantly surprised/impressed if Roomba
| let their robot run "off-grid" for very long.
|
| Update: pleasantly surprised: https://iroboroomba.com/how-to-
| use-roomba-without-wifi/
| dshdsh wrote:
| In my experience, without wifi, roombas are loosing their
| schedules after some time. I don't remember exactly, after
| couple of weeks maybe. They just stop working according to
| schedule or star they work on unusual hours.
| rsweeney21 wrote:
| Love 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."
| po wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Here 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 wrote:
| You 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 wrote:
| While 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.
|
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| izacus wrote:
| It's very clear:
|
| "Please note that this list is exhaustive. These are the
| supported robots."
|
| https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/supported-robots.html
|
| The supported robots are the ones on that list, nothing
| more. The firmware might work on more of them though.
| m1keil wrote:
| I think in that case they might want to make it clear
| they are recommending unsupported model.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's really nice to see a "don't try to force people to use
| this" and a "here are reasons not to use this". Refreshing.
| deluxeroyale wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Yep, 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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| Take a look at vacuum wars on youtube
| manmal wrote:
| Last 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.
| mehuln wrote:
| Checkout Matic at maticrobots.com.
|
| Few things:
|
| 1. We have HEPA bags - each bag acts as HEPA filter.
|
| 2. We found that more than suction power, the brush roll is
| more import for effective sweeping and vacuuming. It picks
| the dirt way better... so we have designed first of its kind
| to hair tangle-free brush roll. It is designed to be
| effective on all kids of surfaces.
|
| 3. We further improve efficacy with actuating cleaning head
| so it adjust the height for each type of surface with diff
| thicknesses.
|
| 4. The HEPA bags last a month if just vacuuming and about a
| week if daily vacuuming and mopping. It collects both wet and
| dry messes. It even has version of diaper salt and charcoal
| powder so it doesn't smell or get moldy.
|
| 5. But the most important is completely Vision first
| perception with precision 3D system so that it doesn't get
| stuck, chew wires, etc.
|
| Indoor world is entirely built by humans, for humans, to fit
| our vision first perception system. So we have given it a
| very similar perception system.
|
| 6. Private by design. It was built to work completely w/o
| internet connection.
| ratiolat wrote:
| Looked very promising, but there are some hard blockers: 1.
| It's not shipping yet, meaning there are no trustworthy
| reviews. 2. It will be shipped to USA only. 3. It needs
| apple device for (full) control.
|
| Hopefully all of these will be adressed
| mehuln wrote:
| Totally understand. Here's a review from the first look
| demo that we gave to reporter from Wired.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/matic-robot-vacuum-first-
| look/
|
| And, yes, we're starting with the US and iOS but will be
| adding support for both international and Android ASAP.
| Thanks!
| manmal wrote:
| Sounds good, let's see how it holds up in the real world ;)
| I'm not in the market for a vacuum RN btw.
| mehuln wrote:
| For sure! So far field trial results have been great, but
| we've got work to do before we ship. Lots of bugs to
| squash! Thanks.
| FearOfTheDuck wrote:
| Looks cool! But disposable HEPA bags mean that the owner
| will be vendor-locked on them.
| mehuln wrote:
| Ultimately, we're striving for great user experience
| which we can do with the bags. Our goal is to make bags
| as cheap as possible and already it's a $3/bag which is
| way cheaper than any other robovac bags if we're not
| mistaken.
|
| That's also why we have all-you-can-clean membership plan
| -- it's optional and users can purchase bags a al carte,
| but with it's unlimited bags. mop rolls, extended
| warranty, and accidental coverage it's really a great
| peace of mind for our users.
|
| Our goal is to provide great customer experience first
| and formost with a higest quality product. Thanks!
| deluxeroyale wrote:
| Thanks, Looks really nice and exactly what I am looking
| for. I want to mention that my first reaction was "it's
| huge, where do i even put it?" And make sure you ship
| outside the US!
| mehuln wrote:
| Shiiping outside will happen for sure.
|
| In terms of size, it's ~1x1 feet and far smaller than
| some of the docks that come with disc bots these days.
|
| The reason for 1 feet height is that we are giving it a
| same top-down vantage point that we humans have. Flat
| designs will give ant-like vantage point which makes
| seeing what's in front it rather hard.
|
| Human like vantage point also means it builds maps that
| both the robot and humans can easily understand and
| recognize all the objects. Thanks!
| s0l1dsnak3123 wrote:
| Hi, I'm in the UK and interested in knowing more about
| Matic. Do you have any plans to ship to the UK any time
| soon? You mention the device is private by design (this is
| a huge selling point for me). Does Matic support MQTT or
| any other open protocol to allow integration with Home
| Assistant?
| mehuln wrote:
| We will ship to UK as soon as we can - just starting with
| the US for now. In terms of integration with Home
| Assistants -- again zero problem in doing this. We will
| eventually get there, but we want to make sure that we do
| it in a way where privacy is still maintained. We do not
| want to enable it if it means sharing private data of any
| kind with home assitant companies.
| latchkey wrote:
| Similar price point as a S8 Pro Ultra, but without a dock.
| The dock is actually really nice cause it stores water /
| dirt and more importantly... cleans the mop after use.
| Membership is also a non-starter for me.
|
| I think you're going to have a hard time competing against
| the S8.
| mehuln wrote:
| Thank you for your kind feedback.
|
| The choice of lack of dock is deliberate one -- when we
| did research with our target audience -- familes and
| working parents with kids/pets, we realized that they
| actually do not like the large dock for few reasons:
|
| 1) It's ugly - family homes are very carefully decorated
| and most don't want the big dock in the room.
|
| 2) It's extremely loud -- again, it's a matter of
| preference but it's like rocket taking off every time it
| vacuums the vacuum. And, even the self-cleaning mopping
| is noisy. It still doesn't cover for the fact that it
| just drags dirt around between those cleaning cycles.
|
| 3) We heard from familes that they hated the smelly dirty
| water and did not know where to throw it.
|
| Again, I'll refer to back to noise but for lost of pets
| and kids, the noise of dock and the robot are very scary.
| I know because my Golden hated it and my 3-year old would
| cry everytime the rocket took off.
|
| Based on the response so far to pre-orders, we're very
| optimistic that it's resonating. Thanks!
| latchkey wrote:
| 1) agreed, it is bulky and a bit ugly, but it also fits
| perfectly under the sink in my kitchen, so this isn't an
| issue for me. It isn't like a regular vacuum isn't bulky
| and ugly either.
|
| 2) it is loud for about 30 seconds as it sucks what is in
| the robot into its own bagged storage. not a big deal at
| all.
|
| 3) it is a lid sealed container of dirty water that you
| just pour down the sink or a toilet after it is done
| cleaning. this isn't rocket science here.
|
| 4) I'm not worried about someone in China seeing me in my
| underpants. My house and images and what I paid for it
| are already listed in MLS. This is classic making a big
| deal out of something that really isn't a big deal.
|
| 5) Do you know how many S8's have been sold? That would
| be the real comparison with your pre-orders. My bet is
| that they are orders of magnitude higher.
| mehuln wrote:
| Also, families care a lot about privacy, and right or
| wrong, there's an inheritant mistrust of cloud based disc
| bots and especially those coming from China. We do not
| beleive anyone of the disc bot companies have wrong
| intentions or anything, but I know that I wasn't
| comfortable with our home data going to cloud.
|
| Hence, we started with the premise that we shouldn't have
| to compromise our privacy to keep our floors clean.
| Thanks!
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Fwiw, I've found that the main brush from the Q5 works better
| in my S7 than the factory one
| a_t48 wrote:
| The S7 Ultra has a $100 mop heater add-on that helps manage
| mop stank by drying it out after use.
| latchkey wrote:
| Or just buy a S8 Pro Ultra.
| deluxeroyale wrote:
| Great learnings, thanks for sharing. I have been eyeing the
| roborock series as there seems to be some sort of consensus
| on them being slightly better than the others, yet I get this
| review astroturfing vibe when reading reviews and posts. And
| like you mention in the learnings; mop gets moldy, dust bag
| emptying, huge basestation etc just misses the point somehow.
| I will probably end up getting one slimmed down version from
| roborock
| manmal wrote:
| The mop doesn't get moldy for me. What I meant is that
| there are such reports for other vacuums. The base station
| is sizable, yes, but tbf it does carry a lot of liquid and
| dust storage.
| mehuln wrote:
| Good to know. Thank you!
| slowmotiony wrote:
| For the mop getting moldy problem, I recommend to simply get
| a pack of replacement mops from aliexpress for like $5 or
| something. After a cleaning cycle, throw the used one in the
| washing machine and replace it with a new one, it only takes
| 10 seconds of work and your floor remains bacteria-free.
|
| I have an S8 and it's a real life quality improvement, I love
| that thing
| mehuln wrote:
| Ours self-cleans so eliminates the hassel of having to
| replace it after every cleaning cycele.
| viraptor wrote:
| Similar for my proscenic. While the company exists in theory,
| the app can't register a new device on Android anymore. Since
| my last phone update I'm just left with hoping that I never
| need to change the schedule and it will keep running until it
| dies.
| louwrentius wrote:
| I wasn't even aware that Neato is shutting down. I owned two
| Neato's, one is dead, the other one is dying (screen broken).
| Still sad.
| Namidairo wrote:
| There'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_dus...
|
| [2] https://streaming.media.ccc.de/37c3/relive/11943
| mehuln wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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 wrote:
| How do you handle changes during a session? Eg legs/cats,
| chairs being moved etc - are those constantly re-integrated in
| the map?
| mehuln wrote:
| Matic 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 wrote:
| Would you please expand on your VSLAM improvements? What other
| implementations are you comparing against and on what
| metrics/settings?
| mehuln wrote:
| The 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_Ex
| plore_Mehul...
| ranguna wrote:
| Is that sped up ?
| mehuln wrote:
| Yes. Its at 4x the speed.
| ihattendorf wrote:
| Any specific reason to avoid Lidar? Cost?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Probably not, it looks like it costs about 4x what my lidar
| vacuum did
| krasin wrote:
| And there's an annual subscription on top. I really don't
| understand the value proposition here.
| yoavm wrote:
| I don't see an annual subscription. I see one year of
| "unlimited replacement of HEPA Bags, Mop Rolls, and Brush
| Rolls". That sounds great actually.
| mehuln wrote:
| Thank you. Thats correct. Membership is OPTIONAL. Users
| are welcome to buy bags and rolls a la carte.
|
| And Membership is more peace of mind with all-you-can-
| clean like unlimited bags and rolls, extended warranty,
| and accidental damage coverage.
| mehuln wrote:
| Cost is in computes and lack of economies of scale. Have to
| take Tesla like high-end to more affordable overtime
| approach.
|
| Disc robots have been around for 20 years. Most are exactly
| the same from inside.
| mehuln wrote:
| Single pixel lidars are not enough. Anything higher is way
| too expensive.
|
| Also, Indoor world is designed with our vision first
| perception. We think robots need to be imbued with similar
| system. And we believe vision is enough (there's a reason why
| nature chose vision based systems for us?)
|
| Three bottlenecks in on fully autonomous indoor robots are:
|
| 1. Perception and Precise SLAM 2. Affordability 3. Privacy.
|
| All three are feasible with Tesla like cameras only approach.
|
| Problem with indoor robots isn't sensors -- it's lack of
| brains/algorithms.
| hedgehog wrote:
| Looks pretty nice. How does it handle cleaning under furniture?
| mehuln wrote:
| Thank you. Cleaning head is 2 inches tall and extends up to 3
| inches below furniture. It cleans all the visible dirt and
| goes underneath anything that's taller than ~14".
|
| It's designed to clean visible dirt thoroughly.
|
| Frankly, if primary use case is cleaning underneath furniture
| than disc robots are great already.
| oynqr wrote:
| All of the devices that Valetudo supports also only run the
| actual cleaning logic local-only. That's why Valetudo works in
| the first place.
| mehuln wrote:
| Yep. The diff is dynamic and continuous mapping.
| matthew-wegner wrote:
| I've used three generations of vacuum robots, with the latter
| two being Valetudo-supported:
|
| * Eufy RoboVac 11 (no lidar, the "stumble around triggering
| front bumper" locomotion)
|
| * Dreame Z10 Pro (lidar, base station vacuum emptying, mop
| attachment)
|
| * Dreame L10s Ultra (lidar/camera, base station vacuum emptying
| plus clean/waste water for integrated mopping)
|
| I root a second a vacuum for my partner's place, but past that
| it's very hard to recommend a Valetudo setup to someone remote
| who doesn't have the technical skills to do the rooting and
| install procedure. So the Matic is potentially appealing to me,
| even if I never end up using one myself.
|
| Looking at the Matic page: I _think_ this is aimed at people
| with very cluttered houses, i.e. folks with young kids? The
| implicit pitch here seems to be, "it doesn't matter how
| cluttered your house is; this little robot can get in there to
| clean without tangling".
|
| Except... that's never made explicit? It's just a lot of photos
| of very cluttered spaces. I'm left to connect the dots.
|
| Customers aren't going to care about "Real-time 3D floor
| mapping" or "Cutting-edge vision software". They want "Won't
| trip over your (sometimes literal) shit".
|
| Vacuum feature wise, it seems like table stakes and not much
| past that? I only just upgraded to the L10s Ultra, which has a
| larger base station that includes two water containers--one for
| clean water, and one for waste water. The robot returns to the
| base station to cycle water and clean the mop pads every X
| square meters (configurable). This does _such_ a better job
| actually mopping, compared to the Z10 Pro 's mop attachment. It
| lifts the mop pads when it crosses carpet, so it can even mop
| the other side of large area rugs that fill rooms. I suspect
| the Matic's mopping will be only marginally okay, especially
| with no mechanism to automatically clean the mop pad?
|
| Rubber roller seems to be common on newer robots too.
|
| Having a charger-only base station seems really limiting
| (versus emptying on-robot waste into a larger bag on the base
| station itself).
|
| I picked up a second L10s Ultra for my partner's place for $630
| during the black friday period, so price-wise it's going to be
| an uphill battle. Honestly, though, I don't think people
| willing to pay $1k for a cleaning device are all that price
| sensitive. I'm trading money for convenience, and I would
| absolutely trade more money for more convenience if I clearly
| understood the convenience on offer.
|
| Lack of Home Assistant integration makes it a no-go for me
| personally, as a technical user, but I realize the average
| person isn't going to care (and probably you shouldn't either).
| If you did want to support Home Assistant, I _think_ the
| shortest path would be MQTT support. You don 't need to do a
| custom integration. It's fully discoverable and automatic if
| you adhere to their expected structure: https://www.home-
| assistant.io/integrations/vacuum.mqtt/
|
| Anyway, no idea if any of that is useful, especially since
| "nerdy person who roots consumer hardware" isn't exactly your
| target market, but maybe something in that brain dump is useful
| info!
| mehuln wrote:
| Thanks for the detailed feedback and thoughts.
|
| 1. Yes, our core users are young families: working parents
| with young children and pets. Clutter and rate of entropy is
| just higher. :)
|
| 2. The fundamental reason for reengineering and reinventing
| robot floor cleaners with Matic is that disc robots are
| relatively inferior and suck (literally and figuratively).
|
| Few issues that I as user encountered: 1) constantly getting
| stuck, chewing wires, dog toys, etc. 2) small bin size and my
| wife hates the big docks - she just thinks they are ugly.
| (People go out of their way to hide appliances behind
| cabinets, so why do we need to tolerate these ugly bricks. 3)
| Noise. Not only vacuum is noisy but docks are like rocket
| ship taking off - doesn't work with pets or young kiddos. 4)
| Can't get to sides and corners - circle shape. Vacuum at the
| bottom is literally 2 inches away from the side 5) and, can't
| tell it where, what, how to clean. Most times I don't want
| the whole home cleaned or whole room -- I just need to clean
| kitchen are clean where we cook/chop veggies etc.
|
| ** However, it just doesn't make sense to why we are
| tolerating these Gen 1 robots that were invented in early
| 2000s. They were great for that time. But they are Nokias and
| Blackberries. Now tech and AI is so much better, so it's time
| to reinvent and build iPhone of home robots.
|
| (200+ self driving car start-ups, same amount building
| industrial robots, none in home space...why?)
|
| 2. We believe that just like self-driving cars need Google
| Street View maps (which Sebastian Thrun built first) and GPS,
| fully autonomous indoor robots need precise SLAM and high
| fidelity 3D maps. With Matic, we are letting robots build
| maps on the fly and remember its location in precise manner.
|
| 3. You are right that mostly we have built table stakes
| features. However, the it's about HOW we have built them.
| With our vision-first approach, disc robot ceiling is our
| floor. That's just the foundation.
|
| And HOW is about making robot that actually works and is
| intelligent.
|
| How can we call robot intelligent if it continuously needs to
| bump? If it doesn't even know what's in front of it?
|
| A robot that can navigate our home the way we do is in itself
| a huge step forward and for that it needs precise and dynamic
| maps (we constantly observe when things move).
|
| We have done few things: - reinvented sweeping and vacuuming
| to adjust suction, brush roll speed, height of CH etc. based
| on type of surface and type of dirt. (We don't take vacuums
| over rugs with frills and we mop wine stains - why can't
| robot do that).
|
| - first if it's kind self-cleaning mop that doesn't just drag
| dirt with it like mop pads. Instead we squeeze dirty water
| and dirt out the bin with every turn.
|
| - a completely new mobility system invented for the modern
| homes. disc robots don't climb shag rugs. We do.
|
| - quiet. Vacuums at 55dBA and mops at 52dBA. This is really
| important for robots to do things on our behalf in homes.
| They can't be noisy.
|
| - with our ID not only families love looking at it but kids
| and pets are not afraid of it.
|
| And, we are just getting started. By end of the next year we
| will be adding embeddings and simple chat like
| command/control based on visual maps.
|
| Stay tuned!
| matthew-wegner wrote:
| Sort of a strange question on a Valetudo thread, but have
| you used Valetudo on a lidar-enabled robot? You can easily
| clean specific rooms, and I've never seen a lidar robot get
| lost, and very rarely stuck (usually something like
| managing to close a bathroom door behind itself).
|
| But anyway: I do think it's worth tripling down on your
| "average busy person with a cluttered house" pitch. 3D
| mapping is a huge distraction, although I get that it's
| unique and your team is proud of it. You're selling the
| features it enables!
|
| If your site's first content was a time lapse video of
| Matic navigating a living room covered in toys and charging
| cords that would tangle most robots, though...
| mehuln wrote:
| Will add lot of it... before it can navigate precisely,
| it has to know what's in front of it. Lidar is a one-
| laser, it cannot see what's above or beyond that one
| pointer, so it's bumps and tangles with wires/tassles
| etc. all the time.
|
| Imagine if you could only see just one-inch ehigh of
| what's in front of you -- not below or above -- then
| you'd un into tables or chairs all the time. Single pixel
| lidars are sort of like that.
| VeninVidiaVicii wrote:
| 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.
| poisonborz wrote:
| It 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 wrote:
| Define "old"
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Direct link to the list of supported robots:
| https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/supported-robots.html
| joshstrange wrote:
| Not 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 wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| I 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
|
| [1] https://github.com/Hypfer/valetudo-dreameadapter
| moooo99 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| The 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
| rhim wrote:
| Sadly not my region. Maybe I'm 2024 able to get one.
| pabs3 wrote:
| The Valetudo page says it is Apache 2 licensed, so that would
| be open source not source-available?
| reedciccio wrote:
| Indeed, valetudo is open source. The parent comment seems to
| prefer a different approach but valetudo project took a
| different path and is forcing the commenter to maintain their
| own fork (which is a feature of *all open source approved
| licenses*, not of all source available licenses)
| vldmrs wrote:
| I couldn't find how to run Valetudo on iOS which is sad since my
| native app is too slow sometimes.
| alufers wrote:
| You can just use the browser.
| ortichic wrote:
| There is none, there is a section why and waht to do without it
| in the FAQs.
| LeanderK wrote:
| 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/being super loud, same with drying racks. Is
| this still a problem? I thought maybe those vision/lidar robots
| can avoid climbing the tubes.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > 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 - 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.
| vikeri wrote:
| This is amazing, I wish it had support for Ecovacs too
| archi42 wrote:
| Dennis 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 wrote:
| > 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.
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(page generated 2023-12-28 23:02 UTC)