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.
Well, same. The thing is that, if my stock vacuum starts behaving erratically, I can always contact the manufacturer without fear of being banned.
At this point, I have to choose whether I want a vacuum that phones home, or one where I know absolutely zero people will be able to help me, because they (and me) have all gotten banned.
I can see why author's strictness in adhering to his community rules is off-putting, but at the same time, for all the complaining, I do not see anyone being willing to put the effort in to build a different community. Yes, this is work, but one wants it, go and do it (not referring specifically to you, stavros, but to the general theme in the entire discussion).
After all, this is free software, published under the Apache 2.0 license. Fork it and build a community you want it to have (you don't even have to do any code changes, and you can simply reject any external PRs more politely :)).
With that said, maybe the author is right in wanting to keep this "infrastructure" boring and to attempt to safe-guard their time, but at the same time, they do spend a lot of time defending their approach to this and complaining how nobody has read their 20 pages of "community instructions", which really, is an expected behavior for everyone (no matter how much one wishes otherwise). I can't not wonder if it would be less time & energy consuming if they did it more politely?
Yeah that’s fair. Personally I very very rarely use manufacturer support because it’s just very limited. And also likely limited to 2 years.
And when the software is fully offline and I control the update cycle, it’s unlikely the vacuum will just start misbehaving unless the actual hardware is damaged
Not sure how this is off-topic, software and community go hand in hand. Despite the focus on community, there is still a healthy emphasis on the software part (and many compliments lol).
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Totally second that, I was banned today on their Telegram channel just because I mentioned that I recorded a r2con2025 presentation to free Samsung PowerBot VR7000M vacuum cleaners (no Samsung bot seems to be supported by them to date), titled "Restoring the Vacuum" in here:
I wish I didn't mention Valetudo positively on my presentation now. Hypfer has bizarre (to say the least) views about what community building means and entails.
Oh, see, I actually wish I was part of a community that would have flagged this to me. Maybe there is? Regardless, thank you for sharing, I'll be watching this :)
Yeah, they seem pretty clueless. Right now they're doing the classic 302 back to Hacker News when you visit with an HN referrer. So they appear to have this extremely unnuanced approach to wielding power where they just block people with minimal reasoning.
I used to focus always on the tech. Now I focus on the people. No time for this kind of behavior.
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.
> 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.
And I witnessed similar, very unfriendly interactions.
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?
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.
<script>
// Every _single_ time it devolves and turns into shitflinging with nice words. Please just go away
if (document.referrer.includes("news.ycombinator")) {window.location.replace(document.referrer)}
</script>
I find this topic in particular difficult to judge because it:
- very much represents the Hacker approach of taking things down and rebuilding them in a better way
- contains technically interesting methods to circumvent DRM, region-locking, and replace the built-in manufacturer's cloud
- uses Node.js + React, so a rather popular web stack, and is Open Source, so it represents a learning opportunity based on a real-world project
- it's a genuinely useful product for people who like home automation
On the other hand:
- the project self-describes as highly idealistic, anti-consumerism, anti-hypergrowth, all of which don't really go well with VC funding or VC-style start-ups
- the author clearly doesn't want HN to talk about him or his project
But I find it problematic to follow your suggestion in general, because I'm sure many companies that get grilled on HN don't appreciate it. And that jwz blog who just redirects to an insult with a picture of hairy balls also keeps getting discussed on HN. Similarly, I'm sure Elon Musk, for example, also doesn't appreciate all the hate he gets here on HN.
Readit News
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.
At this point, I have to choose whether I want a vacuum that phones home, or one where I know absolutely zero people will be able to help me, because they (and me) have all gotten banned.
After all, this is free software, published under the Apache 2.0 license. Fork it and build a community you want it to have (you don't even have to do any code changes, and you can simply reject any external PRs more politely :)).
With that said, maybe the author is right in wanting to keep this "infrastructure" boring and to attempt to safe-guard their time, but at the same time, they do spend a lot of time defending their approach to this and complaining how nobody has read their 20 pages of "community instructions", which really, is an expected behavior for everyone (no matter how much one wishes otherwise). I can't not wonder if it would be less time & energy consuming if they did it more politely?
And when the software is fully offline and I control the update cycle, it’s unlikely the vacuum will just start misbehaving unless the actual hardware is damaged
Deleted Comment
Not off topic at all but extremely relevant.
It's the way IOT should be
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
I (and probably many others) more closely associate the term with Brazilian no-holds-barred fighting matches called Vale Tudo.
Valetudo – Cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabling local-only operation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38788326 - Dec 2023 (154 comments)
Valetudo – Free your vacuum cleaner from the cloud - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34287116 - Jan 2023 (45 comments)
Valetudo: Open-source cloud replacement for vacuum robots - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31665872 - June 2022 (89 comments)
Open Source privacy-friendly firmware replacement for Robot Vacuums (ie Roombas) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29308273 - Nov 2021 (1 comment)
Valetudo is a cloud-free web interface for robot vacuum cleaners - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25856788 - Jan 2021 (20 comments)
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 one must have a chat with our gods of capital in order to correct it. But I'm not sure they are listening.
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.
Then it begs the question of why they even publicize the Telegram chat. I guess it’s for contributors only, not a support chat.
https://radare.org/con/2025/#vacuum
I wish I didn't mention Valetudo positively on my presentation now. Hypfer has bizarre (to say the least) views about what community building means and entails.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
I used to focus always on the tech. Now I focus on the people. No time for this kind of behavior.
https://www.reddit.com/r/valetudorobotusers/comments/1lmz85n...
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.
Dead Comment
> 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.
And I witnessed similar, very unfriendly interactions.
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".
Dead Comment
Even if it were, I wouldn't ban people for a year in my community, I'd simply have an "RTFM" bot response.
I cannot stress this enough
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.
https://www.jwz.org/
- very much represents the Hacker approach of taking things down and rebuilding them in a better way
- contains technically interesting methods to circumvent DRM, region-locking, and replace the built-in manufacturer's cloud
- uses Node.js + React, so a rather popular web stack, and is Open Source, so it represents a learning opportunity based on a real-world project
- it's a genuinely useful product for people who like home automation
On the other hand:
- the project self-describes as highly idealistic, anti-consumerism, anti-hypergrowth, all of which don't really go well with VC funding or VC-style start-ups
- the author clearly doesn't want HN to talk about him or his project
But I find it problematic to follow your suggestion in general, because I'm sure many companies that get grilled on HN don't appreciate it. And that jwz blog who just redirects to an insult with a picture of hairy balls also keeps getting discussed on HN. Similarly, I'm sure Elon Musk, for example, also doesn't appreciate all the hate he gets here on HN.