I’m looking for a vacuum robot preferably under 500€ and with a cleaning station. My main concern is that most robot vacuum providers seem to need to be connected to the internet. Are there any providers that either don’t need that, where I can block the internet connection or any other way not getting a spy in my home? I’m fine with it if some work is needed
You can check out Valetudo. It is a custom firmware you can flash on many robot vacuum cleaners. Think of it as a layer between the robot and the manufacturer’s cloud that exposes the robot’s capabilities locally thus making the connection with manufacturer’s cloud redundant. There is a section with supported robots and instructions on their site making it very easy to install.
Thanks, that looks really promising
Because Valetudo is not a custom firmware, it cannot change anything about how the robot operates.
Source: https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/newcomer-guide.html
Yeap you are right, custom firmware is the wrong phrase perhaps my fastidious friend :P. I suppose you can call it “cloud replacement” software that runs on the robot after you flash a rooted firmware that allows you to make changes.
Check out valetudo https://github.com/Hypfer/Valetudo
I have an ecovacs deebot n79S and it just uses a remote. You put it on auto and let it do its thing. The pathfinding isn’t great but it does the job and you can manually control it if needs be. There is an option for connecting an app but thats not happening. As long as it comes with a remote you should be good.
I should also add that its easy to clean and pop the front wheel and rear brush out as well as the 2 spinning brushes. The dust compartment slides out easily too.
We have had it for about 2 years so far and it still runs fine.
Another approach is rather than worry about whether the robot or IoT device is respecting your privacy, set up your network to be segmented with VLANs so that the IoT devices can only reach the internet and nothing else on your network. Then just provide fake info for setting up accounts with the IoT devices.
That mitigates a rather minimal leak while ignoring the gaping black data hole.
I like this approach cuz it plays ball and can be reused for a number of products. Could have an “appliances” network and make a reusable fake “appliances” identity for any device that wants to IoT.
I’ve had several brands. I’m sure none were privacy respecting. But beyond that they’re all crap. They all break down and end up requiring near constant maintenance. They also don’t do a very good job of vacuuming.
Better off getting a half decent vacuum (extra points if it uses bags because… Bagless is fucking stupid) and for little clean up jobs get a manual sweeper like some restaurants use.
