this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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Their products require their app, would this effectively turn their devices useless when the servers die?
I know it supports a single button to start cleaning, but I wonder if that will work properly without being able to call home.
Might be time for people to look for alternatives.
It technically still works without the app but it loses features that increase the efficiency of the map, tells it where not to clean, scheduled cleaning, etc.
So basically anything that makes it more useful than just doing it yourself.
Everything that makes it better than a generic copy, yes
That's why I only bought the basic model -- didn't want a cloud company to have a map of my house lying around
I assume this will brick all Roombas past the 800 series. All the scheduling, advanced mapping features etc are hosted on AWS. You’ll be able to press clean to start but that’s pretty much it… That’s unless they open up their software which they probably won’t
If it bricks my i7 room a I'll just take it apart and make it work somehow. It will take a long time but worst case scenario it goes from a brick to a brick
Something happened when they moved to the vslam (i.e camera mapping) robots which made the software much harder to hack… you used to be able to use a serial cable to program them.
They used to encourage people to use a serial cable to program them. I remember when I got my Roomba nearly ten years ago, it came with a little pamphlet advertising their educational platform robot, which was basically a Roomba without the vacuum cleaning stuff. I think they intended it to be sort of the next step up from LEGO Mindstorm or something. But at the bottom of that pamphlet, there was a paragraph that basically said "hey you can get this educational robot, buuuut, the one you just bought has the exact same connections, firmware, and hardware 👀👀👀"
You can root a lot of the earlier ones.
The alternatives are Chinese, or vacuum your own floors... Nobody wants to do that
Valetudo FTW https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/supported-robots.html
I’ve got a Samsung that works just fine completely offline with no app. I don’t need some app to block it from going somewhere I just put some things in the way. Takes 3 minutes to prep for it driving around.
Requires an app? As soon as Amazon bought it, mine has never again connected to an app or the internet.
It usually has a big start button on it'
Works fine without the app.
Not if you want to schedule, edit the map, customize routines, etc
It’s still usable, it just reverts to the old school Roombas. Press clean to vacuum. Press dock to return to charger.