by oliwarner
11 subcomments
- The hardware is an issue, not because it's bad but because it's massively expensive to buy the components piecemeal.
You can purchase a lidar vac for £70-80 now. Even if you only replaced the brains, that's a quarter of the price of a Oomwoo. The only upgrade I'd want is self-emptying. You'd probably have to relocate the charging contacts but it seems highly achievable.
Or you could break up an existing vac for the parts. You'd get the lidar, bumper, ToF, cliff sensors, motors and wheels, perhaps even some seals for your printed parts. Again, much cheaper, especially if you shop on the used market (I can get a whole working vac for the price of new wheels). All these robots use common parts so the risk of getting it wrong is very small.
My point is perhaps they could coalesce around a common white label option unit or set of parts currently sold as a vacuum.
- > oomwoo is organized so the community can build it in parallel. The robot and its software are split into self-contained modules. You pick whatever module interests you, work on it whenever you want, and submit your work as a pull request. Multiple people can tackle the same module — the best solution surfaces over time.
I think one major advantage of open source over commercial alternatives, is the possibility of endless improvements. Similarly, 3d printing as a manufacturing method allows for a short iterative cycle, high degree of design freedom, customisation as a product feature, local production, and an high degree of repairability.
It’s going to be interesting to see how well git(hub) and discord serves as collaborative tools in this case. Hardware files are often binary, hardware components have complex interfaces between them, and hence depends more on human communication and collaboration.
I really hope this project succeeds. I’d love a cloud free robot vacuum that I can trust.
- Even though it’s vibe coded, I like the idea of an open source repairable robot vacuum. The current generation of them are notoriously not built to last / be repairable.
by goodwillhunting
0 subcomment
- I've always wondered why the Robo mops have lagged so far behind the vacs, to the point that wirecutter (at least as of last year) wouldn't even recommend one. You'd think they'd be on par by now even with the added complexity of water. Pool robots deal with that quite well.
- Personally, I find open hardware to be the selling point for devices that are supposedly running open source. If I can't change the parts/components, there's really no point.
- As someone who works across software, hardware, and deep learning, this project makes me happy. My $1000+ vacuum will happily get stuck on the cloth mat, eat all our lego, and it has seen a hundred times, no memory, no meaningful object reasoning, just a marketing claim of intelligence propping up the price. This is something I will definitely play with.
- The name is exciting to me. I've been a multiple time robot vacuum owner and it does have an appeal to be able to see a fresh build dissected like this. Why not contribute to this project instead of having a go all on my own, except of course with my AI helpers. I could pick the vacuum control board for the motors and sensors. I have some thoughts on brushes too.
It's a good point, vibe coding does lend itself to fast splitting among developers with the intent of recombining quickly too into a larger project.
by binaryturtle
1 subcomments
- I wonder if there's a project like there's OpenWRT for routers, just for vacuum robots? Where you just can buy some device form a normal online shop, then flash your custom firmware, and off you go with a privacy respecting fellow that doesn't film you and doesn't send everything to some US or Chinese cloud. :)
(I still use a traditional vacuum here, because all the privacy and snooping aspects of those robot thingies.)
- If it can take out the trash and chat with me by voice, I think it’s a great gadget.
- The name reminds me of Woomba, the hilarious SNL parody of Roomba back when it was initially going mainstream: https://youtu.be/gqesEYUXr78
by wisdomseaker
3 subcomments
- Are robot vacuums always circular, wouldn't a single 90 degree or similar section be useful for accessing corners
- Interesting project. Aren't most modern robot vacuum's using image processing to determine whether to stop or not now though? How is Lidar going to help you avoid the cat's diarrhoea on the rug?
- I am bone tired of slop. This looks like a useful thing to build (the cameras in existing closed source robo vacuums creep me out), but when people don't even write their announcement blog post by hand it gives me zero confidence in the project getting anywhere meaningful.
Perhaps not the place to share this, but it's depressing. I hope this proves me wrong.
- my interest in this would be to customize the cleaning plan/logic... especially regarding traversing difficult carpets edges (which my roborock struggles with)
maybe something like:
- this specific part of the carpet is the best place to enter onto it
- once successfully on a carpet, stay on it until done cleaning it
by AussieWog93
1 subcomments
- Man I wish was able to participate in this project.
- Looks very cool.
- No information about whether it will run Valetudo.
- Lmao this repo is 20 days old, but description is written like it's Linux.
- I just can't say how much I want to see the growth of open hardware.
by winterbourne
0 subcomment
- Nice! This is just what I'm looking for. An old Roomba 880 served us well until it could no longer charge its battery, even a new one.
The AI slop on the site is not appealing, but it could also mean that the project will be parallelized successfully.
by taffydavid
0 subcomment
- Great, now do a lawn mower!
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