I recently bought a robot vacuum, installed valetudo, installed tailscale onto the robot itself and now I can control it from anywhere through my personal mesh vpn.
It's pretty amazing. Valetudo is perhaps the most opinionated software I've ever used, which comes with the good and the bad. But overall, it works and it does what it says it will do.
I don't really need to access it remotely, though it has come in handy: when heading out of town I can turn off the scheduled cleans and just run it once on the day I'm returning home. Which is really the only functionality you would need the manufacturer-provided cloud connectivity for.
It's been fun explaining to people that it's "declouded", but I can access it from anywhere. Melts non-tech peoples' brains a little bit.
To expand on laulis' comment: Valetudo isn't a full custom-firmware, it's a mod for the existing firmware. You copy on the Valetudo daemon binary, fuss with the init scripts to start the daemon, and fuss with the DNS and such to point some domains at 127.0.0.1 to talk to that daemon instead of the normal servers (well, actually you probably download a firmware image from dustbin that already has those modifications applied).
This is a distinction that is worth making because the robot is still running and relying on all of the on-robot proprietary code; it's just the in-cloud code that has been replaced.
Why on earth would you do it?! It was literally the comment I visit HN for - a solution for the problem we basically all have, already tested by someone, starting a thread with people's experience of it.
switz|4 months ago
It's pretty amazing. Valetudo is perhaps the most opinionated software I've ever used, which comes with the good and the bad. But overall, it works and it does what it says it will do.
I don't really need to access it remotely, though it has come in handy: when heading out of town I can turn off the scheduled cleans and just run it once on the day I'm returning home. Which is really the only functionality you would need the manufacturer-provided cloud connectivity for.
It's been fun explaining to people that it's "declouded", but I can access it from anywhere. Melts non-tech peoples' brains a little bit.
altairprime|4 months ago
> Cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabling local-only operation
LukeShu|4 months ago
This is a distinction that is worth making because the robot is still running and relying on all of the on-robot proprietary code; it's just the in-cloud code that has been replaced.
dvfjsdhgfv|4 months ago
Why on earth would you do it?! It was literally the comment I visit HN for - a solution for the problem we basically all have, already tested by someone, starting a thread with people's experience of it.
laulis|4 months ago
unknown|4 months ago
[deleted]
thearrow|4 months ago