Comment on Man Alarmed to Discover His Smart Vacuum Was Broadcasting a Secret Map of His House

papertowels@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

• jaschen306@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  This is great, but outside the security aspects of things. What else can this firmware do that I can’t with say, the roborock? Am I giving up functions?

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  • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    I literally just installed this last weekend, so the docs are still pretty fresh in my mind. I still recommend you go read through that site to get the full picture and make your own informed decision, but here’s my tl:dr.

    Valetudo, first and foremost, is intended to enable select models of vacuum robots to operate cloud-free. It’s not intended (nor is it feasible) to offer feature-parity with the manufacturers’ firmware/apps/cloud services. But in my limited experience, the only feature my robot is missing after installing valetudo is the ability to live-stream video from the onboard camera, which isn’t a big deal at all for me (and is something that the dev specifically won’t support). Everything else works flawlessly so far. It also allows you to configure just about anything the robot supports configurability for, like pathing algorithm adjustments, obstacle avoidance sensitivity adjustments, and a whole host of other things. I’m not sure if the manufacturer’s app even allows that level of configurability (because I never installed it), but I definitely feel like I have full control over my robot, and it functions flawlessly at performing its job of keeping my floors clean.

    I think the biggest thing to be aware of is the rooting/installation process may require some soldering (not of the robot, just some through-hole soldering on a separate breakout board to make connecting to the robot’s debug port more foolproof), and requires comfortability in a Linux terminal. If those things aren’t in your wheelhouse, I’d say this project probably isn’t for you.

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    • jaschen306@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Thanks. That answers my question. I already blocked my vacuum from phoning home through my pfsense. So I am mostly there. Flashing seems like extra steps for the same results.

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      • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Yeah if your vacuum does enough for you with its Internet access restricted, then there’s no good reason to install valetudo. I chose to install it on mine because 1. paranoia, 2. I don’t have a good firewall solution set up yet, and 3. a lot of features on my vacuum are disabled if it can’t phone home, but valetudo re-enables those features.

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  • papertowels@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Unfortunately you’ll have to do your own research, I only know this exists and have never used it because my vacuum is incompatible.

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