Roombas at the end of the world | Hacker News Reader

Roombas at the end of the world

spectrum.ieee.org

172 pointsbinidxaba40 comments

I wrote this story, which originated entirely from a single picture on brr [1], an Antarctica blog that has wonderful, detailed descriptions about how the South Pole station functions.

[1]: https://brr.fyi/

This blog is great. Thanks for sharing.

On my bookmarks toolbar for quite some time, fantastic blog.

This was hilarious and I loved it. I had read the blog previously and noticed the sticker, but missed the story.

We're going to get roombas with full AI at some point aren't we.

Clean when people are away and pets when they are home.

I've seen enough scifi to know exactly where this will end up.

I don't think this requires AI. Just monitor when the phones are connected to the wifi.

The Roomba app already does this (supposedly. it's part of the initialization. I haven't used it though. Still trying to get our Roomba to not run out of battery before going back to the home base then needing a factory reset to connect to the wifi again. They have some kinks)

Mine are named Trouble (S9+) and Mayhem (m6). They're dressed in vinyl wraps to be less boring.

I just have the one, and we named him Pablo.

Named after the old labrador of one of my previous neighbours.

Mine that works well is named "Houseboy"

The one that behaves really poorly has been through a series of names from "Ceiling" (because I thought it'd be funny to see a notification telling me that Ceiling is stuck and ended its job), to Hessalam ("Last Chance" from wheel of time) and is currently named "Chaos Monkey". I hate that damn thing.

Mine is named... whatever my 4yo daughter insists on calling it this month.

I was completely surprised to see the robot vacuum get more affection from my kids than all their toys, and even our cat.

Mine was renamed "bobot", because my 2 year old struggled with the word "robot".

Years ago, my daughter named our Roomba "Puck" because it looks like a giant hockey puck. I liked the double-meaning of it also being the name of the European trickster-fairy (aka "Robin Goodfellow") and so have stuck with it.

Our 4y/o named ours Circle Cat

I call mine Cletus, because it ain't the smartest tool in the shed. At least once every run I have to kick it out from under it's nemesis...my living room chair. Where it has been bumping into the legs for 20m.

As a slack-jawed yokel, I feel personally attacked.

We inbred southern bumpkins have no ill will towards our slack-jawed fellows.

Most folk’ll never lose a toe but then again some folk’ll …

The LiDAR mapping ones make all the difference.

Our random mapping one was such a frustrating piece of garbage it was just thrown into the closet after a few weeks. My Wyze lidar one is amazing - you can even just yank it off the floor, set it somewhere else, and when you resume it’ll go right back to where it left off and continue.

I know it uploads the generated map to the cloud, but I don’t really care because it keeps my upstairs clean without me lifting a finger.

Ike

Ike-a-roomba!

If I had one, I'd name it "Sick 'em" (like Ralph Nader named his dog).

It only takes a single look at a Neato Botvac returning to its base station[1] to understand why we named it... Mr. Wigglebutt/

[1] for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERPRf7SsfvY

Roomba since 2004.

He's always been called "James" (as if he's our butler)

Mine is named Rooby (j7+). Quite good for German Shepherd hair.

Bye-bye, Roomba Ernie.

You were taken from us too early.

Bye-bye, Roomba Ernie.

You’re 5,000 candles in the wind.

Makes you wonder about the conversion factor between Roomba years and human years.

My Roombas seem to last about 5 years (then they get transformed into experimental robot platforms).

But since it's getting harder to find ones that don't connect to the network, I think I may just start actually repairing the one that's currently used as a vacuum when it breaks, so I can continue to have a good robotic vacuum.

So look into Valetudo if you want local control of your vacuums.

It's a open source application that (after rooting the vacuum) replaces the cloud with a self hosted control webUI.

I am a big fan.

Thanks for the pointer. I'll look into this.

Bobsweep still sells some that don't connect to a network. They also have an online store with spare parts.

Verring off topic...

Can I run a Roomba whilst preventing it calling home?

Is there a setting for that or would I have to configure firewall rules?

Not completely. If it's one that does mapping, that's all stored on the cloud.

You can prevent some of the telemetry with a pi hole, but be aware that every run will end with a notification of "communication error" when the Roomba tries to report on you

Is there a maker of privacy respecting robot vacuum cleaners that you know of?

iRobot still sells all the parts for their old, non-cloud vacuums if you don't mind buying used and doing DIY parts swaps. They're very repair friendly: No special tools required and easy to take apart.

Not a maker exactly, but there is an open source hobbyist software project for certain brands of robot vacuum: https://valetudo.cloud

It lets you run them without any cloud connectivity or forced updates.

I run a ~5 year old Roomba, that I just never connected to anything. I control it via the physical buttons and it works just fine. Is that not an option anymore on newer models?

My oldest is approaching more than 11 years I believe, though I've replaced its brushes and rollers and batteries at least once.

i remember some guy bought a bunch of roombas and programmed them to play pacman. it was pretty neat

a Ghost frame conversion would be nice. Although not very round

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