Oomwoo, an open-source robot vacuum you build yourself

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• Hacker News
• 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.
  by goodwillhunting
• Are robot vacuums always circular, wouldn't a single 90 degree or similar section be useful for accessing corners
  by wisdomseaker
• Neato used to have a straight edge with 90 degree corners on both front edges. My Neato D7 is thr best robot vacuum I had. Unfortunately they shut down their cloud services, so it's useless now.
  by bgnn
• Mostly circular, some have slightly asymmetric shapes like Eufy e28. The mid range and higher typically have an extending arm that handles edges or corners
  by stevewodil
• Being circular allows for zero clearance turns.

  If you imagine a square robot traversing a wall and approaching a 90 degree inside corner, it can’t make the turn and would also be unable to make a perpendicular move to get more space.

  That said Eufy, Makita and others make square-ish robots.

  by throwaway219450
• The brushes usually don't go all the way to the sides of the vacuum, that's why many of them have an additional circular brush on the side to get into the corners and scoop the dirt to the big brushes in the middle.

  No need for edges, also makes navigating through narrow things easier.

  by Bairfhionn
• 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.
  by bicepjai
• 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.

  by frio
• Isn't a AI generated blog post better than someone building a useful thing and nobody hearing about it?
  by jimnotgym
• 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.)

  by binaryturtle
• There is! https://valetudo.cloud/
  by theblazehen
• I just can't say how much I want to see the growth of open hardware.
  by holistio
• If you are not already familiar with https://www.crowdsupply.com then check it out, both to buy but also consider selling your own work.
  by utopiah
• 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 skyberrys
• 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.
  by sqdiaz
• 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 shaunkoh
• A few thoughts on the vibe coding… This is probably just one person and this project wouldn’t have seen the light of day if they weren’t able to vibe code it. A few years ago this would have to be a kickstarter that raised at least several hundred thousand- probably millions to have a shot at successfully getting off the ground. You’re talking software and hardware engineering, experts in multiple disciplines, a whole team of people pouring in many hours to develop a product, etc.

  Vibe coding doesn’t always have to result in low quality. An experienced engineer with good systems design skills piloting an agent can be incredibly productive. Although I’m pretty rusty at writing code, I’m still good at systems design and I’m having success with coding agents.

  Recently, I’ve built a system for myself because what I wanted didn’t exist. There’s no way I ever would have done it without AI. I wouldn’t be able to pull it off myself even with years of time and a budget to hire developers for my personal project is nonexistent. It’s the kind of thing I never would have thought to start prior to good coding agents.

  My productivity has been insane. I feel like there’s 10 of me. The quality of output is shockingly good. I’m looking at this and it’s one of the most put together systems I’ve worked on at any point in my career. It’s beyond what I saw from much more senior developers than I and it’s beyond what I was ever capable of myself.

  I get why people don’t like vibe coding. It does produce a lot of slop in the hands of someone unskilled in the use of their tools. It costs people their jobs. There are a hundred reasons not to like it. The flip side is we get cool projects like this one because a single person can build the thing they always wanted and never could until now.

  by jm4
• Agreed. I can code so I don't care whether it's vibecoded or whatever to bootstrap. Them working on designing hardware is what matters to me. I'll definitely keep an eye out for the kit, I don't have a lot of patience for hunting parts but would love to play with this.
  by fluidcruft
• I don't know why you would say that, my Xiaomi s6's wheel motor died, I was bummed about it. I ordered a replacement motor, and to my surprise, I only had to open one or two screws and the motor module popped right out. The module had a nice slitting connector. I put the new motor back in and I was done. The thing must be at least 8 years old by now and it's still chugging along. I now passed it on to my parents and it's cleaning their house.
  by RealityVoid
• > 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.

  by lovlar
• 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.

  by oliwarner
• > ...it's massively expensive to buy the components piecemeal.

  I think the point of this is not to make "a product". It's just a fun project that you can build yourself or participate in some way with it's creation and/or funding.

  It's not practical. That's OK.

  by crispyambulance
• > £70-80

  Dreame's rebranded Mova starts at something like 350 EUR. Yes it's kinda capable and yet still kinda shit - gets tangled, stuck and needs quite some TLC. It doesn't look like it's going to be very reliable either.

  I can't imagine how poorly 70 one can be.

  Reminds me of people buying battery stick vacs without checking and then getting disappointed it's not same as dyson (while samsung as actually leads according to project farm tests).

  by dzhiurgis
• I think about parallels to custom auto hobbyists. There are a lot of shops that can do incredible builds matching up different parts, engines, suspensions and even large scale chassis mods, but there are comparatively few outfits setup to build the car from scratch. A car is a different scale endeavor than a vacuum but some of the tradeoffs are similar. Maybe the engine, transmission etc mechanical interfaces are more easily modified and adapted than digital electrical software interfaces
  by dv_dt
• I agree - OpenMover has that approach. Use a COTS mover and change the brains only https://openmower.de/
  by dsrtslnd23
• I own three robot vacuums from two different manufacturers that are nearly identical. Exact same charger station that seems to match what Oomwoo uses. My point is that Oomwoo seems to use at least some common parts already.
  by tohnjitor
• For that, there's https://valetudo.cloud/ that supports a number of models from different brands.
  by haellsigh
• Yeah I don't think fully open sourced hardware is the play here. For €350 you have a vacuum with home station, with mop, with carpet detection and lift function and with proper software.

  I'd rather buy that and change some components to have local software. Similar to what this hobbyist sells for home assistant compatible home ventilation: https://github.com/arjenhiemstra/ithowifi

  by Jasp3r
• Gagguino is a great example of this approach, licensing scandal aside†. Espresso machines are expensive and not because the software is particularly clever. They are electrically simple, but mechanically there's a lot of pressurized plumbing that you really don't want to DIY.

  The kit is a control board for the pump and boiler, and some add-on sensors for temperature and pressure. The "high end" features that it enables are almost entirely software driven, the main one being temperature control via PID. I've seen even simpler mods for other machines that bypass the "brew" button so you can do things like connect a bluetooth scale to enable brew-by-weight on a machine that doesn't support it, or add a shot timer.

  The commercial version of this would be the Decent, but it costs 3x as much. I would love something like this for my robot vacuums. Valetudo is minimally invasive, but there's no reason you couldn't control the vacuum + wheels, but navigation is hard and those sensors are much more complex (can you even access the camera and undistort the image?)

  https://gaggiuino.github.io/#/

  † they pulled the rug on open firmware

  by throwaway219450