• 39 minutes

    As time goes on I’m hoping more products like this that give what was once only possible via locked down proprietary software a new open and repairable life as theres many new products and tech that I see but could never use unless I’d want to just upload everything I do to whoevers servers and pray that they don’t get breached.

    • 11 minutes

      https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/

      The Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) is a modular, DIY, low-cost, high-performance platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts. We’re developing open source industrial machines that can be made at a fraction of commercial costs, and sharing our designs online for free.

  • github
    A user you’ve blocked has previously contributed to this repository.
    look inside
    claude
    click insights
    Top 3 committers is: some org account, another org account but with “.ai” in it, claude

    EDIT: they are not only the top 3 committers, they are the only 3 committers

  • I just want one where the storage the vac empties out into is on the side so it can slide under a couch.

    These things take so much damn space and for some reason they didn’t figure out there is a bunch of real estate underneath shit.

    • 2 hours

      Delete this comment, sell idea to a company, profit! But in all seriousness this is a smart idea.

  • 3 hours

    While this is a cool idea, if you read the article, it’s only an idea. Seems like nothing but a reference design has actually been made. Hoping to see it progress, but we shall see.

    • 17 minutes

      Yeah, over the years I’ve learned to not hold my breath about any interesting announcement. Though I’m at the point now where I don’t really care either way and feel like pointing it out for any specific project just feels overly pessimistic. Just let them cook or contribute knowing there’s never a guarantee it’ll come to fruition.

  • 3 hours

    the robot vac i have had for 3 years is the dumbest machine. goes over the same areas multiple times a session. has a manual steer setting but if i gotta steer it, whats the point of robotics? finally gave up and got a dust mop.

    • 2 hours

      At the risk of sounding like an ad, roborock (xiaomi) makes fantastic vacuums. Great navigation, great cleaning performance, obstacle avoidance (cables, socks, etc) depends on the model.

      They do offer a meter interface if you want to have it offline, but I’m quite happy with the (cloud based) app, allows a bit more control.

      It integrates with home assistant but it sometimes goes “unavailable”, the matter integration is a bit more stable for that.

      I sure other manufacturers also have great ones, check “vacuum wars” on YouTube.

      • Oh the physical part is all me, she just wants to do the computer stuff lol. But yeah she’s been interested in some projects where she can program and I can build.

  • The two things with robot vacs is one cleaning the roller is to annoying. I think it would be best for it to be like a shop vac. Yeah it would not do as good a job but would be a good general cleaner and you don’t have to mess with the roller sweeper. Two is a base station to auto empty the refuse bin. Honestly for the first part it maybe just better as an option. so you have one for more thorugh clean that will need more maint but no more than a standard vacc and one that is less maint and can pickup more types of stuff. Might be good just to have the shop vac type go first so that the roller type gets gunked up less.

    • 2 hours

      The roller has been solved a few years ago. The split-roller design doesn’t need any maintenance, no hair tangles in the two years I owned mine. Plenty of robots use it, as the patent expired.

    • I agree completely but the suction required for something without a brush is huge and you’ll need a much bigger motor and battery. I had a vacuum that didn’t auto empty for years and while my new one is a huge upgrade it was a time saver just to have one do the vacuuming and then empty it manually or every other time if there wasn’t much dirt.

      • See I found it was not much of a time saving. I would rather just vaccum than clean and prep it. It was useful when my wife was sick as I literally needed to be able to do two things at once and cleaning it out could be done at any time and piece meal and such so it worked. But under normal circumstances, again, I would just prefer to vaccum which does not take all that much time and is not ardous. Now something that went pretty often and was like 99% autonomous where I just empty a bine once a week. That would be worth it. Even if I had to vaccum I could do it once a week and keep the carpet very clean or once a month and have it be pretty decently generally clean.

    • 3real5me…the amount of time and money needed to make even simple projects robust and truly usable, and not just a janky DIY job that needs to be used in just the right way or it’s wonky is always more than you expect. No matter how many times you’ve been through the process.

      • 9 hours

        I think my device is easy and intuitive to use. The user wants video instructions and refuses to use my thing otherwise :(

      • 10 hours

        I tend to consider first attempts/versions as Betas. Sometimes I will do the full alpha, beta, RC cycle

        Freedman has a pretty good video relating to this

    • I would actually be more interested in custom firmware for our old touch-and-go Roomba. The hardware is great, fully modular, did even survive a round of cat barf and washing. But the firmware is buggy and does inefficient vacuuming rounds.

    • 11 hours

      Ha, let’s hope that doesn’t happen here. This is genuinely exciting.

  • 5 hours

    Awesome project. So cool DIYers can build something like this now (with a lot of help from the project owner)!

  • 7 hours

    Awesome project! I would love to buy some robovacs, but I don’t want some unknown entitity mapping our home and whatnot. Our maid would love it too. Being done earlier for the same pay 😁

      • 6 hours

        Oh. Wow. Thanks. Last time I checked the market it was horrible and then I just gave up on robovacs. Too many different to reverse engineer every single one. But great, gonna check this one out deeply. Thanks man.

        • The setup is fairly involved and not super beginner friendly however I finally came across and finished to flash my robot a few weeks ago and i don’t notice any difference vs the stock firmware when using home assistant, beside the fact that its no longer connecting to all these random servers in China. It really is a wonderful project!

          • 3 hours

            Sounds great! Although I less worry about Chinese servers than american servers 😁 I would even be fine if it were shittier then, or totally manual programming or whatever. Just not clouds that get data I know nothing about and have no agency over it.

  • You can tell it’s a genuine high-quality open-source project because the name sucks

    • Looks pretty cool but a very short list of compatible devices. Also, what they consider “budget options” are not what I would consider “in my price range”. LoL 😂

      • 2 hours

        What is your price range, a button and two shells? The S5 can be found for 50 bucks used.

    • 8 hours

      I love valetudo!

      But I also think there should be more open source robotics, and a robot vacuum feels the right topic as a starting point.

      I think I also saw someone that wanted to make a robot grass cutter.

    • 13 hours

      As i understand it Valetudo is not actually firmware to control the robot. It is a “parasite” that makes the existing robot firmware belive it is connected to the cloud which is very different from actually controlling and navigating the robot. However, in terms of homeasistant integration it could be worth getting inspired.

      For a control operating system ROS could be something to consider. When I used it 10 years ago the project was quite unstable since tools changed constantly and it was overly complicated to work with, but a lot of development has happened since so maybe worth considering. I wrote this before reading the article

    • This is why I love foss software. Their is some guy hacking away at some very specific problem in his own time and he shares it with the world for free. You will have never heard of this problem or even contemplated its existence but once u know some foss developer has solved it going back to a world where it doesn’t exist is just a little bit duller.

  • If I have an old Roomba can I hack a new brain into it? I’ve got a Raspberry Pi and a soldering iron and a willingness to break them for science. Never done much hardware hacking though.

    • 9 hours

      Technically yes GPIO -> pin headers of each physical control.