The app is ios only and you need to buy hepa bags every week for it. Those kind of kill it for me.
app
it’ll be a paperweight when the company goes tits-up
I know right! I hate that so much new tech needs an app and will lose functionality/stop working if the company stop supporting it or you phone stop working with the app.
Of course it comes with an app… :-/
It wouldn’t be such a problem if they at least offered an API for connecting to the device for third-party apps. But everything is locked down to guarantee obsolescence on software timelines even if the hardware lasts.
The fact that it costs $1800 means it was dead on arrival for me. But I wish them the best if they can carve out a niche of privacy-focused iRobot/Roomba customers while bringing increased exposure to privacy issues
I use a broom. It’s good for privacy and uses 100% green energy.
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Well, wired as there’s a couple pieces of heavy wire binding the corn straw to the handle.
Some have their connected to their wife
Do you also use a horse? Also good for privacy based on recent news.
A bike!
Even better because you don’t need to feed it when you aren’t riding it
And it doesn’t shit as much.
Yeah but a broom is $2500 so this is better
Green? Like solar? Are you photosynthesising?
Plants I eat photosynthesize.
You collect them stirckly yourself? No carbon-consuming tech involved?
I do not want to descend into some kind of “but there is always some carbon” point, I just want to point out that a robot powered by, say, solar electricity can be more green than a human-powered broom, production costs included.
Neither of the two is perfectly green, but a solar-powered robot is more efficient in leveraging solar power than human growing and eating plants.
Or do you think this is necessarily not so?
I think that if we’re talking about human slave responsible only for swiping the floors that I feed vegetables and keep alive solely for the purpose of operating the broom you can be right.
If we’re taking about the amount of calories I use while swiping and compare it with a robot that someone had to manufacture, transport and than charge using electricity it will be a clear win for the broom. Maybe if the robot lasted 50 years and I controlled my diet to the point that I was able to eat 3% of a carrot daily less because I’m not swiping any more the robot could win but it’s an absurd scenario.
It is not at all obvious to me why it is a win for the broom. Humans are a lot larger than a robot and there is a lot of wasteful body movement. Production costs are a factor, but why 50 years and 5? Or 1? We agree at least that production costs excluded, solar powered robot is more green than a human broom? If so, what remains is this time to offset production.
If you stop brooming you will either gain weight or reduce carrot consumption, no need for custom control. Or you can do something else with time and energy previously reserved for brooming, maybe even something that results in an overall more green world?
I think you hugely overestimate the amount of energy used for brooming. It’s not like it’s a crossfit workout. I don’t eat more on the days I clean. My diet with and without a broom will stay the same so brooming is basically free when it comes to energy. People don’t use vacuums because they save money on food this way. They use them for their convenience. Vacuums let you save time, not energy. So yes, if you spend the time you save planting trees it’s great but we’re getting pretty far away from the broom vs. vacuum discussion and we’re starting to talk about imaginary people and their imaginary lives.
I think we did not really estimate here, there is just intuition. I made these estimates before for electric bikes vs human powered, and found that, somewhat counterintuitively, electric bikes may quickly become less carbon-consuming.
I do not accept the idea that brooming comes for free. If you add 15 min moderate activity of brooming per day, you may spend, say, 100kcal. If you add it to your daily routine, you need to compensate with food or loose weight. Energy balance in humans is tricky, which is one of the reasons people find it hard to control their weight. But things like replacing a 15min couch sitting with brooming make a difference for weight. Because they consume energy. Or do you continue to propose that replacing the couch sitting with brooming has zero energy and diet difference activity, is “basically free”? To be clear.
Vacuums help to save time. Carbon impact of vacuums and replacing human-powered activities with solar-electricity-powered ones is not especially studied. Which is why I think intuitive understanding here is lacking. Someone should develop it, maybe write a blog post or a paper.
This is not imaginary, growing replacement of human work at scale has a real impact on carbon consumption. My point is that in some cases, e.g. with electric bikes or vacuum cleaners, human power, even plant-supported, can be more vastful.
This title is dumb. Companies are not selling all of their products at a loss just to harvest your data[1] and privacy is not significantly more expensive. Don’t let capitalism fool you into believing we’re suffering from anything but the natural progression of “infinite growth”.
We’re so far into dystopia, and used to every company double/triple/quadruple dipping, that the entire concept of a company simply building a quality product, that lasts as long as possible, without ads, or extracting and selling your data, planned obsolescence, or price gouging is insanity… which is itself, batshit insane. This is not an efficient system. It’s a runaway freight train of greed and narcissism that is parasitically killing our host spaceship.
[1] they might be with Alexa hubs and other select data harvesting multipliers, but they’re probably selling them at cost or a tiny loss.
Depends on the business model. Take Apple and Amazon. Apple makes most of its cash off hardware sales. As such, Apple will never sell you a $50 Mac hoping to make the money back thru services or ad revenue of any kind. And why their HomePods cost 3x more than any smart speaker.
On the other hand, Amazon doesn’t make money off hardware. They routinely blow out Fire products at insane discounts. A 10th of what Apple charges for a comparable product. Because they make their cash of sales and services. Products are just a conduit to more lucrative services.
You can’t lump every company into the same money making MO. Every company tends to have their own unique angle.
I mean it’s partially true, do you remember Juicero? The entire goal was to get you integrated into the subscription model. It was well built, but they still priced it in a way that would make people want to buy the service needed to actually use it. Most companies either want subscriptions, or willingly lower build quality just to be able to sell you a new version within a shorter timeframe
The idea you need to buy a “juice pack” rather than literally buying a bag of good frozen fruit and just letting it melt into juice is insane. I hate how companies have everyone convinced they can offer you something and act like its super hard and only they can do it sucks.
I had this realization about computer apps. You can replicate almost any function or code, but it does makes sense often in that domain to simply buy the app if its for keeps and that is maintained.
It was a badly thought out product, I agree. It also failed quite spectacularly because of it. I just brought it up because it was actually a really good deal based on the device quality itself. Sadly the entire press can’t even use normal burlap pouches with fruit inside, it doesn’t produce the pressure. It might have been a turd, but by god, they put as much gold on it as they could.
I think juicers themselves can be a good product, but not with an idiotic business model behind it too. Oh and they should not require WiFi access for DRM verification of the juice packets and device.
One of the lessons I have learned as an engineer is that device quality doesn’t matter if you do not need a high quality device. There are times when you need a high quality press. Squeezing juice out of a pouch is not one of them. All of that extra quality you bought is doing nothing, because all you are using it for is squeezing juice out of a pouch.
Fair. Although it is nice seeing needlessly well built products when they do pop up (as long as you don’t need to pay for that extra build quality, of course)
Again, you can just like buy frozen fruit and let it melt into juice. Not sure how that would work with apples/oranges (never see them as frozen fruit) but I don’t care for the mentioned since they’re so high in sugar baseline but my tip here def works.
Frozen fruit as in normal packets of frozen whatever? It’s an interesting idea you mentioned, tell me more
Just do it. Go buy a bag of frozen strawberries or whatever frozen fruit you would like to turn into a smoothie and just let it defrost until you’ve got a Juicero-style juice pack
Edit: if you don’t cut the top and its still like hermetically sealed, you basically and literally have the same thing—juice pack.
It may have been well built, but was still completely idiotic. Who, in his right mind, would buy a proprietary bag of fruit pieces instead of normal fruit that has to be at least half the price.
The business model just didn’t make sense.
It wasn’t even a bag of fruit pieces, it was already pre juiced and the machine just put it into your cup (which you could do by manually squeezing it too)
planned obsolescence
Apparently the Instant Pot was built without a lot of bullshit and this Atlantic article suggests that was why the company filed for bankruptcy.
I disagree with that being the reason. Products without lots of bullshit do fine but Instant Pot purchased other companies and tried to expand into basically every kitchen role in like 5 years.
Look at Vitamix for instance and even with making composters? they seem to manage without bullshit.
yeah this is the worst part of modern life. Its insane.
https://www.theverge.com/23934731/valetudo-robot-vacuum-hacking
Or you buy a cheap compatible robot and install valetudo
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If Valetudo isn’t fimware, what is it?
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How bad is it?
This is cool but it would have to be like a third that price before anyone could take the leap. If anything someone should find some way to hack and replace the spyware in a Roomba or something
Well aren’t you in luck, people are doing exactly that over https://valetudo.cloud/
Not for Roombas but on a couple Xiaomi/Dreame/Roborock models.I can’t wait to ruin my 700$ vacuume
I know you can’t put a true price on privacy, but I can clearly state that this goes beyond reasonable pricing for me. $1800, plus $180/year in fees for bags/membership subscription. That’s a $3600 + battery and parts replacement investment over 10 years, and who’s to say the app/device firmware will be supported that whole time? The extended warranty is for two years. There doesn’t appear to be information on repairs outside of the warranty, which requires the subscription for 2 years for the extended warranty. This sounds like a disaster of a product from an ecological standpoint.
The price is way too high. I’m still rocking my dumb Roomba from ten years ago. It’s a few parts away from the Roomba of Theseus at this point, but it still works. Without an Internet connection.
Would you mind telling me which model you have? I’m looking to pick one up used on ebay or something :)
It’s a pre-wifi 639. It looks like this (but that one isn’t mine).
Amazing, thank you!
Another solution that guarantees no data is sold is to just buy a regular corded vacuum. It may not be as convenient, but it’ll save you having to worry about your vacuum stealing data. At least until they start forcing newer models to require an app.
I’m pretty sure my corded vacuum has been speaking about me behind my back and turning my wife against me.
It just shouldn’t need to be the case that I sacrifice privacy for convenience.
Years ago shopkeepers asked you what you wanted and then they went and got it and packaged it for you. Then it became the better option to let you choose your own items and we’d just deal with the shopkeep to pay. This way more people were served simultaneously and everything went quicker. Imagine if you had to tell the shopkeeper the last time you cranked yourself or what size your living room is in order to progress to this more efficient process.
My current vacuum, cordless, with swappable batteries, was $100
I could buy ten of them and leave multiples in each room (because I don’t live in a mansion)
dyson
ooooor use whatever brand and model is compatible with Home Assistant
Eh. That doesn’t prevent anything if the unit itself still connects to the internet somehow (looking at you, Wyze).
You really just need to make sure the unit doesn’t and can’t get online. Very few of those out there.
And that is why VLANs are amazing. Can’t phone home if it can’t connect to the internet.
Until it outright refuses to work without its cloud connection
That’s why you flash the vacuum with a custom firmware!
First two sentences of that readme:
Valetudo is a cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabling local-only operation. It is not a custom firmware.
Doh! My bad.
It isn’t custom firmware but it does install software on top of the existing firmware onboard which is pretty slick.
Don’t they have cellphone network capabilities
no, that’s ridiculous. Would be too expensive
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Me speaking to my mum: Get off Facebook! They’re just trying to sell you shit you don’t need!
Also me: oh, I should replace my robot vac with this fancier one!
I’m gonna have to wait for some sweet sweet inheritance before I can afford this one.
Buy a Valetudo compatible vacuum and patch it. Dreame L10 is the first one that comes to mind.
Damn that bag must be super small to only last a week. My s7 ultra dock bag lasts around 6 months. Before I started living with a cat I was still using the original bag that had been going on a year and still wasn’t full, vacuuming daily.
Edit: For context, my roborock dock’s bag is 3 liters, so think the volume of 1 and a half 2 liter soda bottles, and the apartment it lasted a year in was ~500 sq ft. The matic’s bag needs to fit inside the robot and looks to be close to the size of the palm of your hand. You can see it at 0:37 in the video on their site.
Doesn’t the bag lasting longer suggest it picks up less dirt? My vacuum cleaner needs emptying every one or two times around the house, if it didn’t I would be concerned it wasn’t actually cleaning the floor.
It depends on the size of your house and the amount of dirt and dust.
Maybe, but only if literally everything else is the same. Otherwise it could just mean that one place is cleaner than another, or that one vacuum has a big bag and needs to be emptied less frequently despite picking up the same amount.
- Roborock bag size is 3L (6"x6"x5"), so think 1 and a half 2L soda bottles, since it doesn’t need to fit inside a handheld vacuum or a moving robot it can be this large. Comparatively, the Matic bag which you can see in the video looks super tiny.
- My apt is ~500 sq feet, so “1 time around the house” isn’t very much
- How many dirtying factors apply to your house?
- Pets going in and out track in extra dirt, our cat is indoor only and only sheds some fur (I didn’t have the cat when the dock bag lasted a year so we’ll see how that impacts it)
- Allowing shoes to be worn inside tracks in a lot of dirt - so we don’t allow shoes past the entrance shoe rack
- Going in and out more times allows more dirt to be tracked in - I work from home so I don’t need to go out every day which greatly reduces the amount of dirt tracked in
- Living with more people multiplies those many times over, for me it’s just me and my partner
- Ground floor apartment or elevated - another factor since going up flights of stairs lessens the amount of dirt tracked in. Our apartment is up 3 flights of stairs, so by the time we get to our front door, most mud and dirt has fallen off our shoes. If you live on the ground floor, it’s more likely that dirt and mud can hitch a ride in the treads of your shoes
So it really makes sense that my dock’s bag doesn’t fill up quickly. I can be absolutely sure it works because it produces gray mopping water every time it’s run, and there’s not a speck of dust or cat hair on the floor after it runs. I can check the bin on the robovac after a run and see it 1/3 full of fur and dust, but the bin on the robovac itself is on the small side so once it empties into the dock it seems to barely add much volume - and I suspect that the dock’s vaccum is powerful enough to compact fur and dust into the bag somewhat so it takes up less volume. And that makes sense because the S7 has some of the best pickup performance as rated by vacuum wars on youtube, but I can really stretch the dust bag in the dock both because it’s a whopping 3L bag, because I do everything I can to prevent dirt from being tracked in in the first place, and also because some of the dust is mopped and flushed down the laundry room drain without ever seeing the bag.
I have the S7+ and is awesome. The ultra must be crazy.
Yeah the ultra dock is amazing, I got the mop dryer and water change kit addons, so it auto refills the clean water tank from my washing machine water line, and auto empties the dirty mop water out a tube I stuck down the washing machine drain. I used to have to refill/empty those water bins every week but now the most frequent maintenance is rinsing out the water filter every 2-3 weeks. Everything else seems to be only required monthly.
Some/Many robot vacuums can be flashed with custom firmware and then only communicate locally.
Unfortunately it seems the software isnt as polished or well as cleaning, but i guess some less efficient cleaning vs phone-home crap is a good counter.I’m think I’m okay with using my bagless, cordless, replaceable battery, dumb vaccuum.
I think I will stick with vacuum bags and cord, thank you very much
I bought myself a backpack vacuum with a long ass cable and i never looked back
Or just buy one with a remote or a manual one. It does not and should not require an app to function
Anyone have experience with roborock s7 ultra with valetudo or simmilar?
I have a roborock q5. What’s your question?
What is your perspective on Hegel’s dialectic of Master and Slave and the inference that these asymmetric recognitive relations are metaphysically defective, and does this apply to your relationship with the roborock q5?
Who is the master and who is the slave in this particular relationship? Can authority exist without responsibility and vice versa, or does it necessitate reciprocity?
The mind runs wild.
Id like to know is it worth to get valetudo. I see some dissasembly and soldering required (warranty void) and not sure do I lose any functions. Maybe there is something betterfor s7?
Does it need wifi or an app?
I hooked mine up to wifi and the app. I thought it was pretty sweet it maps out your house and shows you that map on the app. Will it work without the wifi or the app? I don’t really know. I’m not paranoid and want to use all the features on my 300 dollar robot vacuum.
That’s nice do you, but this is a privacy community. I don’t think it’s weird to think it’s weird that a robot that connects to wifi maps out my house. Don’t like it, don’t want it.
My bad. Guess I didn’t realize where I was when I said that. My apologies.
