[oliwarner]

The hardware is an issue, not because it's bad but because it's massively expensive to buy the components piecemeal.

You can purchase a lidar vac for £70-80 now. Even if you only replaced the brains, that's a quarter of the price of a Oomwoo. The only upgrade I'd want is self-emptying. You'd probably have to relocate the charging contacts but it seems highly achievable.

Or you could break up an existing vac for the parts. You'd get the lidar, bumper, ToF, cliff sensors, motors and wheels, perhaps even some seals for your printed parts. Again, much cheaper, especially if you shop on the used market (I can get a whole working vac for the price of new wheels). All these robots use common parts so the risk of getting it wrong is very small.

My point is perhaps they could coalesce around a common white label option unit or set of parts currently sold as a vacuum.

[throwaway219450]

Gagguino is a great example of this approach, licensing scandal aside†. Espresso machines are expensive and not because the software is particularly clever. They are electrically simple, but mechanically there's a lot of pressurized plumbing that you really don't want to DIY.

The kit is a control board for the pump and boiler, and some add-on sensors for temperature and pressure. The "high end" features that it enables are almost entirely software driven, the main one being temperature control via PID. I've seen even simpler mods for other machines that bypass the "brew" button so you can do things like connect a bluetooth scale to enable brew-by-weight on a machine that doesn't support it, or add a shot timer.

The commercial version of this would be the Decent, but it costs 3x as much. I would love something like this for my robot vacuums. Valetudo is minimally invasive, but there's no reason you couldn't control the vacuum + wheels, but navigation is hard and those sensors are much more complex (can you even access the camera and undistort the image?)

https://gaggiuino.github.io/#/

† they pulled the rug on open firmware

[tecleandor]

Oh! I missed the Gaggiuino scandal. What did they do, stop open sourcing? Are they trying to get money from selling it?

Edit: Ah, just found an "out of the loop" explanation here... https://old.reddit.com/r/gaggiaclassic/comments/1hbnd8r/out_...

[felooboolooomba]

> pressurized plumbing that you really don't want to DIY

They're fine to DIY if you're sensible about it. If you can build it, you can build a simple hydrostatic pressure tester. Pump, valves, tubes and a gauge. No computer parts. Pump the tank up to 1.5x rated pressure. This is industry standard.

But of course the age old saying applies: know what you're doing.

[throwaway219450]

Right, but that also means sourcing a grouphead, a suitable boiler and all the other bits. Plus worrying about thermal cutout, running the boiler dry, OPVs, all sorts of safety things. Having someone else handle that is nice. Those projects also exist, but the point is you can buy a platform that has all of that in a nice chassis and only need to replace the control system by mitm-ing the wiring.

It looks like a cool project for sure https://www.diypresso.com and actually reasonably priced for what you get and what a similar spec system would cost off the shelf.

[Jasp3r]

Yeah I don't think fully open sourced hardware is the play here. For €350 you have a vacuum with home station, with mop, with carpet detection and lift function and with proper software.

I'd rather buy that and change some components to have local software. Similar to what this hobbyist sells for home assistant compatible home ventilation: https://github.com/arjenhiemstra/ithowifi

[haellsigh]

For that, there's https://valetudo.cloud/ that supports a number of models from different brands.

[RobotToaster]

None are particularly easy to flash, and the dev seems to have no interest in making it more accessible.

[pbmonster]

There's much to criticize about the dev, but there's really no way to make it significantly easier. Most robovac companies just don't want you to flash the firmware.

The dev opposes selling the connector PCBs, but people have always ignored that and sold them online. They're not hard to find, but having the PCB is really only the first step.

[hju22_-3]

> There's much to criticize about the dev, but there's really no way to make it significantly easier.

Not banning people that want to buy a flashing kit instead of making one would be a start.

I for one would learn nothing, and wanting privacy shouldn't require an arbitrary skill when unnecessary like in this case. Not even mentioning that buying the parts is prohibitively expensive compared to some finished kits I've seen.

[kyorochan]

You can just get a free kit mailed to you from someone if you pay the shipping cost.

[gempir]

micro USB cable and a computer required.

https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/supported-robots/#eurek...

I did this, it's as easy as it is described. Fully functioning robot vacuum free from the cloud.

[moepstar]

The old S5 ones are very easy - factory reset, connect to wireless AP, run utility, done.

[tohnjitor]

I own three robot vacuums from two different manufacturers that are nearly identical. Exact same charger station that seems to match what Oomwoo uses. My point is that Oomwoo seems to use at least some common parts already.

[dsrtslnd23]

I agree - OpenMover has that approach. Use a COTS mover and change the brains only https://openmower.de/

[dv_dt]

I think about parallels to custom auto hobbyists. There are a lot of shops that can do incredible builds matching up different parts, engines, suspensions and even large scale chassis mods, but there are comparatively few outfits setup to build the car from scratch. A car is a different scale endeavor than a vacuum but some of the tradeoffs are similar. Maybe the engine, transmission etc mechanical interfaces are more easily modified and adapted than digital electrical software interfaces

[dzhiurgis]

> £70-80

Dreame's rebranded Mova starts at something like 350 EUR. Yes it's kinda capable and yet still kinda shit - gets tangled, stuck and needs quite some TLC. It doesn't look like it's going to be very reliable either.

I can't imagine how poorly 70 one can be.

Reminds me of people buying battery stick vacs without checking and then getting disappointed it's not same as dyson (while samsung as actually leads according to project farm tests).

[oliwarner]

Maybe. At the very budget end, I was really thinking you take the £150 worth of sensors and motors (when bought new) to make something better.

We just got a second hand Ultenic T10. The 2021 model is commonly available for £40 used. It tangles a couple of times a week and its battery will probably need replacing eventually, but it maps well and empties itself. At that sort of featureset, just a brain transplant to get it offline would be a welcome upgrade.

[crispyambulance]

> ...it's massively expensive to buy the components piecemeal.

I think the point of this is not to make "a product". It's just a fun project that you can build yourself or participate in some way with it's creation and/or funding.

It's not practical. That's OK.

[sudb]

Sounds very reasonable - I don't have a robot vac at the moment because there are some very large thresholds in my flat and the floor itself in places is very wobbly, but if I had a guide to safely mod one to work for my residence I'd definitely have a go.

[dreamcompiler]

This brings up the question: Where does one go to get a white label vac? Say I want to start a robot vacuum company and write my own custom software for it. How do I get a few white label samples from a manufacturer to do that?

[iliaov]

Search ODMs on AliBaba and visit China trade shows where vacuum ODMs exhibit (because not all vacuum ODMs are on AliBaba).

[fennecfoxy]

Not to mention missing out on new features like Roborock's rover, etc. That's not gonna come to anything DIY (well DIY from a kit...is that _really_ DIY) any time soon.

[iliaov]

coalesce around a ... set of parts currently sold as a vacuum - yes, that's exactly what I'm doing. Roborock, Dreame in particular. Biggest brands have deepest aftermarket, cheapest parts.