Valetudo VS dustcloud

If you really want zero network theres always Valetudo, https://valetudo.cloud/

But most of the vacuums want internet access for setup, but then work completely fine being blocked from the internet after.

FYI there is https://github.com/Hypfer/Valetudo which acts as a replacement of the cloud service. I'd you buy one of the supported devices you root it to point to the Valetudo server (which you run yourselves). You can then put the robot on its own WiFi without Internet access if you want to be even more secure.

I'll be the one to plug Valetudo in this thread I guess. Primitively, it replaces the cloud functionality on-device for robot vacuums (see supported models) and replaces it with local services that run offline and can connect to Home Assistant easily.

I will never buy another robot vacuum without Valetudo support as long as that project lives. It's great.

https://valetudo.cloud/

As a consumer and homeowner I try my hardest to buy "smart" things that only have local control, especially for important systems like power and HVAC. Our standby generator has a manufacturer supplied wifi pod that I never set up. Instead I use an RS485-to-USB dongle and monitor it myself with open source software. Our HVAC is the same to the greatest extent possible. When shopping for a new robot vacuum Valetudo[1] compatibility is an overriding concern.

If/when we have solar installed it will not be connected to the manufacturer or distributor's cloud systems.

[1]: https://valetudo.cloud

I have a roborock that I have taken apart a little bit and I thought it looked extremely similar to the article's Roomba from underneath.

Obligatory mention for every robot vacuum article: https://valetudo.cloud/

There are local-only robot vacuum options: https://valetudo.cloud/

But you shouldn't ask yourself why it isn't possible. The question is why it's not successful, or why there's no demand. America is satisfied by foreign alternatives. We don't want secure devices, we want cheap and simple devices that come in pretty boxes with the labels we like. Roomba wins because it caters to the lowest-common-denominator, the basest American that most shoppers embody.

And America doesn't care. You won't see a law demanding software transparency or firmware alternatives for domestic robots. We won't assemble them locally because our labor is too expensive, we won't manufacture the chips domestically because it's cheaper to import them. You won't see people owning USA-made Roombas for the same reason you don't meet people using a Purism phone instead of a Samsung/Apple handset; the market has spoken, and they are absolutely apathetic to anything but price.

Perhaps contact somebody from the Valetudo community with your problem:

https://valetudo.cloud/

https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/

Maybe it can be solved with a simple firmware patch.

https://valetudo.cloud is a project which allows you to use many vacuums without connecting to the cloud.

Dennis is also one of the (if not THE) leading vacuum robot hacker and makes https://github.com/dgiese/dustcloud. Amazing work.

but here's instructions on how to root: https://github.com/dgiese/dustcloud/wiki/VacuumRobots-manual-update-root-Howto

A few of the Xaiomi's and Viomi's are rootable. I have a Gen1 Xaiomi and it's brilliant. I got ssh access to the ubuntu install and installed https://github.com/Hypfer/Valetudo and run it 100% local via my home-assistant install.

dgiese is a proficient vacuum security researcher and has most of that stuff available here: https://github.com/dgiese/dustcloud

Here you go: https://github.com/dgiese/dustcloud/wiki/Supported-Devices

The very first thing I did on my old Xiaomi Gen1 was to root it with information from this repo https://github.com/dgiese/dustcloud/wiki

It's come a long way since the early days and with valetudo it's really easy and convenient to hook the vacuum up to Home Assistant. It's actually one of the reasons I was recommending Xiaomi vacuum cleaners to friends and family. Unfortunately they have recently changed the firmware password making it impossible to root without using a serial connection.

Never once has my vacuum connected outside my own network. I know many instructions say you need to install the app to root, however that's not true. You could upload using https://github.com/rytilahti/python-miio as long as the vacuum isn't provisioned yet.

Here https://github.com/dgiese/dustcloud/issues/103 somebody claims there'd(or atleast in in non-MAX version) would be ADB listening but that just doesn't make any sense to me, why would anybody mess their simple Linux system with Android in such a way? I haven't seen any other reference that there'd be Android onboard.

Also, hacking and reverse engineering devices is fun, but my goal here is to get a floor cleaning robot that doesn't leak data outside and can be controlled from HA, and I am not really willing to spend too much time in order to get it done. I have no problem in disassembling, soldering, flashing and hacking but I am looking for a reasonably stable, relatively straightforward solution, rather than another thing to add to the ever growing list of stuff I have to actively keep maintaining.