I think this thread went a bit off-topic with heavy discussions about the community or developer.
As a user of Valetudo for 4+ years now, I can say that it's a wonderful Software once you get it running once. Depending on your vacuum model it's easier or more complicated.
I bought a used Z10 Pro 4 years ago and with a UART-to-USB I could order from ali-express I rooted it effortlessly.
Valetudo got many cool updates over the years and was always reliable for me.
Not once did I have to re-root or something because the Software bricked itself or whatever.
The updates were beautifully done and simply done in the UI. And I'm very happy that the Home Assistant integration worked great as well.
Personally I couldn't buy a Vacuum robot anymore without Valetudo. Having a remote controllable camera and probably even microphone in some models in my home seems insane.
The Defcon talks from Dennis Giese confirmed that some manufacturers literally send every log line to their cloud server and there was already some bigger mainstream drama of vacuum pictures ending up on facebook somehow a few years ago.
Valetudo is really nice software, but I have a bad taste in my mouth from the community.
I went to the Telegram channel to ask something about why my vacuum running Valetudo would have a specific behaviour (IIRC it moved on its own), they kind of talked to each other for a second to discuss if this question was relevant to the channel, and then, presumably deciding it wasn't, banned me for a year.
Yeah, I’ve never seen a community more off-putting than this one. I’m thankful for it, it works on my robot, but I wouldn’t help or participate in any way.
But it’s like they don’t want help or be a community like mentioned in their docs.
In contrast, for example, https://github.com/Koenkk/zigbee2mqtt was such a welcoming community.
> This project is the hobby of some random guy on the internet. There is no intent to commercialize it, grow it or expand the target audience of it. In fact, there is intent to explicitly not do that.
Then it begs the question of why they even publicize the Telegram chat. I guess it’s for contributors only, not a support chat.
I’m banned, too. I was gifting some people an UART-to-USB adapter which can be used to easily root some of the robots without soldering. The official stance is that people who can’t solder shouldn’t root their robot. It also wasn’t appreciated when I tried to discuss possible UI improvements on the telegram.
That said, the author is doing a great job of keeping the community focused. Obviously, it is much easier to provide support if everyone uses the same UART adapter. And for such a niche concept it might be a good idea to discourage forks.
The only thing that always bothered me a bit is that it seems like there’s one security researcher making all of this possible, but that seems to be a different person than the one collecting all of the donations. I hope they share fairly behind the scenes.
A few years back I wanted multifloor on my Valetudo (I had a weird single room which had a step into it) so I did my research and found a whole bunch of toxicity around this feature, mixed in with a bunch of information which mostly answered my questions (it wasn't supported, which of course I was fine with, because it's not my project and I was just grateful for being able to use it). I figured "oh, this would be useful to document", popped onto the Telegram and asked a few clarifying questions, saying I intended to contribute to the docs.
First I was accused of not reading the docs (I had, they were confusing and incomplete), then I was accused of trying to sneak multi-floor into the product (..what), then I was accused of being a "well-off boomer who wanted him to do extra work because I wouldn't spring for a third vacuum" (I WASN'T ADVOCATING FOR MULTI-FLOOR). So I backed off and watched for a bit, then landed up leaving.
I have no desire to force change on the man (it's his garden after all); ultimately, GitHub was the wrong destination for his work. It's sort-of like he's opened a workshop in the middle of a bustling market and now he's barking at everyone for interupting him.
Recently an error popped up in Home Assistant, so I hazarded a look at the issue tracker to find he'd closed an issue and banned a well-regarded Home Assistant community member for opening it: https://github.com/Hypfer/Valetudo/issues/2310
That’s rough but also a tiny bit funny
That's horrible. Matches the vibe I got by reading the project pages though, felt tiring just trying to get to 'what is this project'.
Yeah its sorta hilarious that someone has taken a "make my life simple and easy" technology to the extreme of "if you don't solder your own breakout board you should get off my lawn".
I'm hoping to sidestep the drama and just enjoy the software.
When you’re two days and one solder in, you’ll need an answer from someone, and you know exactly you’re in for a ride now… been there, done that
Damn. Those comments are damning.
This makes me want to flash mob them and see how many people we can get banned for how many funny reasons
The main developer is toxic af, and the community behavior reflects that.
Between this and grapheneOS, it seems everyone developing privacy software is borderline schizophrenic.
I thoroughly disagree. On the surface, his behavior may seem very similar to the behavior exhibited by toxic people, but once you understand his reasoning, I find it makea perfect sense.
To summarize and paraphrase: the project is his personal garden. It's by him, for him. But he has also decided to open that garden to any random stranger on the internet, free of charge. In a lot of similar projects, that means an invitation is extended to plant stuff in the garden or to suggest that certain plants are moved. He wants to make it clear that that's not the case in his garden. If you wanna plant, you're free to freely and instantly duplicate his garden and get cracking. But he will not be planting your plants in his.
Since people struggle to accept this, he's taken on a harsher-than-normal tone. That's understandable to me.
If this was the case, why have a public telegram group then? Why ridicule members and air drama?
Sounds more like a fetish basement than a garden to me.
No. There is 0 reason to be toxic or an asshat in general. It should not be accepted. He might have reasons to be protective, but one can do that in a respectful manner. But going around, making something up, banning people for asking or criticizing is not the way to go.
Once you make something public it's not a private garden anymore.
That is an explanation not a justification. Toxic is toxic.
See, this is what I don't understand about this type of developer.
When you publish an OSS project, it is an implicit invitation for collaboration, and for being part of a community around shared interests where everyone benefits. That is the entire point of F/LOSS.
Yet I've heard many people, on here, in fact, arguing against that idea. That publishing free software but not accepting feedback, contributions, or providing support, still counts as OSS. And, technically, that may be the case if you consider OSS to only be about the license itself. If you take license terms like "THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND" as the only literal definition of what OSS is. When, in fact, it is, and can be, so much more than that.
People who think like this are doing themselves and their software a disservice. Software is better when it is worked on as a community effort, much like a garden. An individual might have good ideas, and be able to execute them well, but they're not omniscient nor omnipotent.
If Linus Torvalds had published Linux as his "personal garden", it would have never been even remotely as good and popular as it is today. It would have probably been another niche project in the footnotes of history.
Heaven forbid you go there simply to praise the project. The last guy to do that got a 2 year ban and many, many paragraphs of irrelevant pseudo intellectial nonsense from the maintainer.
Not going to paste the message directly - but it happened five days ago and was along the lines of "thank you for breathing new life into my robot which was otherwise destined for landfill".
The docs say "search before asking"...did you do that? Maybe it's a well known issue they're tired of responding to.
Well, given that they had to discuss among themselves whether the question was relevant or not, I'll guess that it wasn't a well-known issue.
Even if it were, I wouldn't ban people for a year in my community, I'd simply have an "RTFM" bot response.
You were not worthy of consorting with the council of wizards.
In all seriousness though, I didn't need to search too hard to find numerous other testimonies of the project author acting neurotically. I'm not sure you missed out on much. Someone on Reddit mentioned being banned after joining the Telegram group for a similar question only a week ago.
Yeah, it seems that way. Ah well, it's his project, I see the ban as saving me time and aggravation.
>Valetudo is not a community
>Contrary to common expectations when it comes to software released under a FOSS-like license, Valetudo is not a community-driven project; nor does it even have a community in that sense.
How can someone ban someone from a community if it doesn't have one.
Saying it doesn't have a community doesn't magically make it true. There are people in that Telegram channel who talk to each other about the software, which is what a community is.
It's still a very harsh response.
> The docs say "search before asking"...did you do that?
This was a typical response that makes people hate communities.
I cannot stress this enough
Just because the user didn't find it doesn't mean they didn't search
It especially pisses off the noobs, because, frankly, they are noobs! They didn't even know what to search for yet! They're learning. Search is still a hard problem. Get a few words wrong and you'll get nothing of value. Worse, it'll lead you to lots of irrelevant information you don't yet know is irrelevant.
The worst part is when it's claimed it's been discussed and no link is provided. If you know it's been discussed, prove it with a reply with the link, then move on. At worst you have made the issue easier to find. At best the issue isn't actually related and you've gained clarifying context.
But banning is just a silly response that's clearly going to enrage people. Are you building a community to work together or a community to circle jerk?
At least when Linus yells at people he explains to them what the issue is.
If they spend time handholding 1000s of lazy people not willing to do basic search provide logs etc before helping they would spend all their time handholding instead of working on the software they are coding in their spare time as a hobby.
As much as I personally do not like the abrasiveness from many open source devs I empathize with their behaviour as most people are not willing to do the slightest work to help themselves and just expect to be hand fed. And this abrasiveness usually comes after years of trying to be helpful.
Btw if you asked a question then got an answer and figured it out hopefully you would have added it to the help notes of the open source software you are using so others would find it
> lazy people not willing to do basic search
It seems you did not read my comment. Here, let me reiterate in case you are too lazy to look back. I even indented it to change formatting the first time
>> I cannot stress this enough
>> Just because the user didn't find it doesn't mean they didn't search
Handholding isn't hard. You can be firm and critical while doing it too. See my example.
> provide logs etc
They probably could, but that depends on the community.
> I empathize with their behaviour
I do not. It is better to just leave the message on read than to respond with hostility. Growing up around my house we stressed "Thumper's Rule"
If you don’t have somethin’ nice to say, don’t say nuthin’ at all.
It applies here too. You can just ignore it instead of investing your time getting upset. You'll feel better too! Maybe just give them more time to keep searching. If you must respond, suggest a query. Either way you're responding, but a nothing response is a lot less effort than an angry response.
> Btw if you asked a question then got an answer and figured it out hopefully you would have added it to the help notes of the open source software you are using so others would find it
I do!
But not in communities I get banned from for not finding the (supposedly) previously discussed issue. They won't let me.
Been running this for years. Absolutely fantastic, my vacuum has never touched the "cloud" and yet I can still run it remotely (or with "smart" run automations) via Homeassistant.
It's the way IOT should be
Adding to the praise of "it just works". My Dreame L10S Ultra was straightforward to root after getting the breakout PCBs required. Now it only talks to NTP and the update server when I remember to check for updates every few months.
You happen to have links for those or is it straightforward enough to just take the first search result? Would love to stop mine from spying.
I don't have any links for assembled boards, but there seem to be some available [1]. You can find the PCB files here [2] including more documentation. The same page also has a Telegram group link to find people near you who might be able to help out.
I got my PCBs made via JLCPCB, but there are other options as well. Pay attention to select the correct PCB thickness, noted in the Readme. I fell into that trap and had to order again. Sourcing the USB port with the correct footprint was a bit annoying, I just ended up ordering a selection of kits with multiple variants from Aliexpress.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45699184
[2] https://github.com/Hypfer/valetudo-dreameadapter
One thing that amuses me is that this could mean "health" (in Latin) or "anything goes" (in Portuguese; normally two words). They're actually from the same root (valeo, 'to be well, to be OK, to be valid'; I think the oldest meaning is 'to be strong'), then with the Latin suffix -tudo (like our -tude, meaning the state or condition of being a certain way), or the separate Portuguese word tudo 'everything' (originally from Latin totum, meaning 'all, entire').
So, the Latin one is like "OK-ness", and the Portuguese one is like "everything is OK" (here in the more modern sense of being allowed, rather than the older sense of being in good condition).
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/valetudo
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vale-tudo
The Roman goddess of Hygiene (Hygieia in Greek Mythology) is named "Valetudo."
I (and probably many others) more closely associate the term with Brazilian no-holds-barred fighting matches called Vale Tudo.
So the name is actually genius! You get into valetudo expecting hygiene and wellness but as you encounter the community you discover it's actually about intense fighting.
Double check your vacuum model. I transformed my vacuum into a neat (well, not really) pile of parts in about an hour only to find mine isn't supported. Apparently S7 MaxV Ultra is a completely different PCB and SoC than the supported S7 variants (S7/S7 Pro Ultra). At least I cleaned it while disassembling, so it wasn't a total loss :)
I briefly considered connecting an ESPHome module to the 'start' button so that I could at least start cleaning from Home Assistant, but since it still won't give me errors if there are any, that seems like a half assed thing to do..
I think there's an actual Roborock integration for HA. I forget if it's official or on HACS, but I've used it and it worked well at the time. It requires cloud, which obviously isn't ideal, but better than nothing IMO.
But according to the FAQ, the vacuums still dont work when they are offline, as they will turn reset their wifi until they are online again.
> When the vacuum is disconnected from the internet, it will attempt to disconnect itself from Wi-Fi and reconnect itself until it can reach the Roborock servers.
Yeah, that’s exactly what happens if I don’t add an exception for it to my iot vlan - it keeps reconnecting to WiFi. Scheduled cleaning doesn’t work without internet either..
I guess I’m not buying the next vacuum until I’m 100% sure it works offline and supports Matter or something..
It's really shameful that the tech gods (i.e. us) have made it almost impossible to have useful technology that does our bidding without first signing over our privacy and sometimes our very personhood.
And sometimes when AWS is down you have a nice electric brick instead of useful device. Totally bonkers.
It is unfortunate.
I think one must have a chat with our gods of capital in order to correct it. But I'm not sure they are listening.
Wealth is imaginary to a certain extent. Nonfungible certainly.
LOVE IT!
Valetudo is a fake cloud that lives as a parasite in a robot's brain (running on Ubuntu!) and hijacks the original comms.
It provides ssh access, very nice control app, MQTT support and other things.
I installed it on my very old Roborock many years ago and it just works. Never had a single issue.
I recently got an “older” generation robot vacuum for this reason. I wish the dreame debug board was more accessible. The designer and creator purposely made it this way so people would learn how to solder. I could solder but I no longer have the time or patience to source my own PCB and parts. Thankfully, someone sells one premade on Tindie.
The overall "I want you to have a project, not a product" vibe put me off using this when deciding what robot to buy. I want a clean floor, not another hobby that turns into a chore at the least opportune moment.
Luckily, someone explained to me that in practice once you've set up, it usually just works, and it runs completely on the robot (i.e. no second device/server/homelab that you'd have to maintain) and since updates are optional, you shouldn't be required to deal with it unless you want to.
(The offputting statements are at https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/why-not-valetudo.html: "it is very much not [a product]. [...] Instead, it is highly idealistic, anti-consumerism, anti-hypergrowth and anti just-continuing-what-we-do-now. [...] these aspects are baked into its design. There is no way of using it without being constantly confronted with them. If you’re not willing to reflect, introspect, grow and most importantly stop, you will not be happy with Valetudo.", plus this "not selling PCBs out of principle so people have to source and solder themselves" - I can solder, but I prefer to delegate boring, efficiently automatable tasks to robots in a factory and would much rather pay someone 10 bucks for a finished board than pay more for the shipping of individual parts and end up with 4 extra unpopulated PCBs that I have zero use for.)
Ew.
I wholly agree with the anti-closed vibe. I even run Valetudo on my roborock. But lol I just want to control my vacuum cleaner locally and that's it. I haven't updated mine for years exactly because I just want shit to work and not have to be constantly fixing things and "be confronted".
There are IM groups where folks mail around breakout boards. There is, AFAIK, no point to the board after the inital rooting.
Yeah I just found someone on reddit who no longer needed their breakout board, so I sent them a shipping label and that was that.
(/r/valetudousers)
This software and the hacking scene around it are amazing!
I’ve got a Dreame L10s Ultra based on the compatibly guide. Joined my local Telegram group, grabbed a USB board, and the same day was interfacing with the vacuum’s Android OS. Once I started SSHing in to upload custom sounds, I couldn’t stop. Way easier than I expected.
Haha yeah that's exactly what I did with my roborock as soon as I rooted it. The voice sentence "Going back to the dock" had such a weird accent that I immediately replaced it. So awesome to be able to do that with a device you own.
> Valetudo is a garden
> This project is the hobby of some random guy on the internet. There is no intent to commercialize it, grow it or expand the target audience of it. In fact, there is intent to explicitly not do that.
> Think of Valetudo as a privately-owned public garden. You can visit it any time for free and enjoy it. You can spend time there, and you can bring an infinite amount of friends with you to enjoy it. You can walk the pathways built there. You can sit on some patch of grass and maybe watch a Duck or something. You can leave a tip in the tip jar at the entrance if you really enjoy it and want to support it flourish.
> You can take inspiration from it and bring that home to your own garden, giving it a personal twist and adapting it as needed. You can even make friendly suggestions if you have a really good idea that ties into the vision that is already there.
> But, at the end of the day, you must understand that it is still privately-owned. You’re on someone else’s property over which you have no power at all. You will have to show the necessary respect. And - most importantly - you need to understand that letting you into this garden is a gift and should be treated as such.
> If you don’t like this garden because you don’t like how it’s structured, or you feel like it’s missing something, or maybe I choose the wrong flowers to plant over there that’s fine. It’s just not for you then. You can leave at any time.
>There is simply no ground to stand on to demand change to the garden. It doesn’t matter if it would attract more people or if all the other gardens in town are doing something in a specific way. It doesn’t matter if your idea of what gardens even are differs. This at the end of the day is simply private property with free public access as a gift to everyone.
> When it comes to software development, everyone has access to infinite plots of undeveloped land that they can claim at any time. Therefore, a garden being build with a specific vision does not take away the ability for anyone else to build their own garden with a different vision.
Bravo.
There are more gems. I particularly like the ‘Valetudo is not a community’ section under ‘Why NOT Valetudo‘
Sounds nice until you read people's experience with trying to discuss anything about the project (see alien site links in a thread above).
I think "discuss" is actually an interesting and probably accidentally specific (and correct) choice of word here.
If you look up the definition, you find
> to talk about a subject with someone and tell each other your ideas or opinions
> to talk or write about a subject in detail, especially considering different ideas and opinions related to it
In contrast, the garden text:
> You can take inspiration from it and bring that home to your own garden, giving it a personal twist and adapting it as needed. You can even make friendly suggestions if you have a really good idea that ties into the vision that is already there.
It's a great analogy.
People seem to apply different rules of decorum interacting with "free" software that they wouldn't apply anywhere else.
Is it the internet aspect that makes it so? Or the ease of feedback to the creator?
I don't know, but it has become very obvious that what worked in the smaller "high trust" internet, doesn't work as well for a lot of people now.
I wish I could use this but last I checked, every supported robot used consumables for cleaning (like vacuum bags). My current vacuum robot uses no bags and has washable filters so nothing gets consumed. Turns out that was more important to me than local-only operation.
On the subject of bags vs cyclone collectors, My mother hates the cyclone collectors with a passion. and a disposable bag was item number one on her list of features when we were looking for a replacement vacuum for her.
I had never considered the subject before and sort of naively assumed that because the cyclone collectors were newer they were better. But she does not like cleaning them out and would rather have a bag so the whole thing can be disposed of neatly.
My roborock S5 does not use consumables and works perfectly with this. It’s even installable OTA.
Never heard of this before, what a great project! I wish my Roborock QV 35A was supported. Still considering sponsoring the project though, because what a great initiative it is!
I'd check some of the comments around the creator's behaviour before donating any money to them.
If you buy your vacuum in china it’s about half price, but it’s geolocked to the mainland. There’s some dodgy looking Cyrillic project that unlocks it via VPN or something like it.
IMO not worth it now that Dreame started to repackaging their bots into cheaper brand Mova for roughly half price too.
I had a hard time parsing the title at first. I was like “I’m pretty sure vacuum robots have to be locally deployed”
The author attitude towards annoying consumers is also hilarious.
My cleaner robot isnt even connected to wifi. Why would it need to be? When i go to work, i hit the clean button. When i come back, my floors are clean. I honestly wonder what more one could ask from such a machine.
I have a schedule in home assistant for it to run on all weekdays at 1pm, except if my partner is home, it won’t run. She is afraid of robots and i wouldnt hear the end of it if she encountered it and couldn’t disable it. Home assistant knows if she is home based on her phone.
I have been exploring valetudo because the roborock integration breaks pretty often. But it seems like a chore and could brick my robot.
One partner afraid of robots the other roots vacuums. Interesting combo
For me the point is automation of low value work. I don’t want to press a button. I don’t want to even think about it.
Scheduling automatic runs.