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Which privacy-friendly home appliances exist? e.g. robot vacuum cleaners.
I'm curious as I'd be possibly interested in a solution that works for me. I'd be looking at devices (mainly a robot vacuum cleaner) that are able to operate without a mandatory internet connection that send over data to a datacenter to collect your information without your explicit knowledge (nearly everyone just clicks 'accept' when reading the ToS after purchase).
https://valetudo.cloud/
I was just reading about these guys. Basically, they jailbreak your existing cloud connected vacuum and give you control over your device.
Supported vacuums: https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/buying-supported-robots/
TLDR:
Completely off-topic, but after checking out their docs, I wound up perusing the auto-mod rules for their forums, and they're absolutely wild. Some of the things that get your message auto-deleted include "I'm new here", "bummer", "accepting prs?", and "the right place to ask".
And the comment on this one, damn:
I've been known to throw a 😂😂 my coworker's way when they make a great joke. TIL I'm an idiot. Bummer 😂
Philosophy here?
https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/so-youve-been-banned/
I can understand only wanting to share the project, not having to deal with the additional workload of supporting or building the community.
It matches some of the senior programmers I know and have known that are very knowledgeable in their area and have a very short fuse dealing with anything they consider stupid questions.
Still this likely hurt and will hurt the adoption a lot which is sad from perspective of not having a forced connection appliances and the promotion of that mindset.
From the response on this post with a ton of people using this extremely niche software out of a relatively small community, I don’t think they are having any troubles with adoption though.
Based on what I know about Hypfer, I am fairly certain that mass adoption would actually be the opposite of what he wants.
And the worst part?
He's probably German 😱🤣🤣
Edit: oh, God, my fears were confirmed by the "this is not a community" link 😵💫😂😂
Was that intentional? Lol.
I feel that the Valetudo is not a community section of the "Why not Valetudo" page is pretty interesting as well. Maybe only tangentially related to the automod ban rules, but still.
Happy Valetudo user here. Been using it for years without issue on my Dreame L10S Ultra. Great integration with Home Assistant. Initial flashing/installation wasn't that difficult - just follow their guides.
Another Valetudo user. I got used Roborosk S5 for 80€ and it works like a charm. Flashed it via wifi (OTA), no need to disassemble and do any electronics stuff. I have integrated it in Home Assistant and use it from there. Their website was very helpful and easy to follow to set it all up.
I can highly recommend it from my limited experience.
Valetudo is incredible and I can definitely recommend it but with some caution.
I'm not going to get deep into it here but Hypfer (the creator and sole developer of Valetudo) is very particular about the project. He essentially views the project and the Telegram group as something like his house and letting people use the project or join the group is like letting visitors into his living room. Because he's letting visitors into his "living room" he has no problem kicking out anyone who mildly annoys him.
There's a custom PCB thing that you need to root some vacuum models. The design and instructions are all freely available but Hypfer is very insistent that (barring a physical disability) you must buy the parts and assemble it yourself. He essentially says that if you buy a pre-assembled PCB from someone then you're a mindless consumer and you've been scammed.
If you search you can find a LOT of stories from people who came away from an interaction with Hypfer either banned or verbally thrashed. I'll just give one example - a while back there was a coming Home Assistant update that would break Valetudo's MQTT integration with Home Assistant. One of the Home Assistant devs opened an issue in the Valetudo repo as just a courtesy notification that this change was coming. Hypfer went off on a rant against the dev for daring to waste his time on an issue when the dev should have known that Hypfer would see the coming change in the release notes and implement the necessary change.
Valetudo the software is great - just tread lightly if you need support.
https://old.reddit.com/r/valetudorobotusers exists as a somewhat more welcoming place for questions.
I have Valetudo on my robot vacuum, but I never was particularly worried about privacy even before swapping over since I chose a vacuum model with no camera and no microphone. At that point, all the vendor can see is my floor plan, which I'm comfortable sharing and is public record anyway.
Largely, they don't exist without DIY. Or just never connecting online and/or never accept the EULA. For home automation choose Zwave or Zigbee things that don't get an internet connection.
Otherwise, you've got to rely on some nice hardware hackers to strip off the garbage. These of course immediately void your warantee.
Valentudo for robot vacs. I bought a Eureka J15 Pro per the supported devices, opened the box, and flashed Valentudo. Never installed the vendor app. Very happy with result. Is pretty easy if you've familiar with android flashing.
I bought a Worx robot lawnmower. If it stops working I intend to dive into the world of OpenMower. I tried to source a model supported there, but couldn't; and it seems some have made progress with my model.
No Longer Evil lets you restore and degoogle Gen 1/2 Nest thermostats that Google bricked for no reason.
I just don’t connect my robot vacuum to the network and start it manually — which is my preference anyhow. It still navigates just fine, I just can’t specify a specific room. It’s a Dereeme (sp?), with lidar and camera.
Kärcher sells pretty decent robot vacuums, but I suspect their software stack is entirely made in China. However, since Kärcher itself is Germany-based, they are bound to some relatively strict EU privacy laws. Unless they found some loophole around that.
https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/supported-robots/
You can get regular Chinese vacuum cleaners and then root them to work with valetudo instead of talking with the original cloud
Tapo from TP-Link prioritizes local data and control. From the Tapo RV50 Omni page...
I can't speak to how good their vacuums are though. I have one from Dreamehome, which can actually work locally with its buttons, but then you lose access to all the adjustments and features offered through the app.
Generally speaking, you'll want to look for ones that support Home Assistant, since that's full local control. Looks like Ecovacs is one such brand.
Last November my Network Botvac D7 was downgraded by its owner to a dumb robot vacuum (I can no longer set virtual zone nor activate it remotely for instance). Neato got bought by Vorwerk, and they pulled the plug prematurely despite promises.
Corporate enshittification aside, some hacker got some functionality back by plugging an Esp32 microcontroller on the robot PCB. As a last resort I might try this, but more recently they announced that they had retroengineered the server (no physical hacking required) and plan to release on September the 4th. I don't know why it's so late (especially since the main Dev shared some working screenshots), so I'm a little but suspicious of it. Time will tell.
Anyway, url to the repo is here, but they have a more active communication channel through their Discord.