dustcloud

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

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

The very first thing I did on my old Xiaomi Gen1 was to root it with information from the dustcloud repo https://github.com/dgiese/dustcloud/wiki and controlled it through python-miio. Until Valetudo came along I was stuck with that janky horrible solution. Now I have arguably a better interface than the official app. It's come a long way since the early days 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 direct serial connection. I really wish companies would embrace hardware tinkerers, I'm actually proud of a bloody vacuum because of all the effort I put in to make it do things. Mad props to Hypfer for starti

Obligatory robot vacuum root links and info: https://github.com/dgiese/dustcloud https://dontvacuum.me/robotinfo/ I have an S50 rooted through this information. Now it only talks to itself and we control it through the webpage hosted on itself. Still has zones, schedules etc. It is brilliant.

The roborock S5 and older models can easily be rooted, and you can install alternative open source firmware [0], newer models still require hardware disassembly in order to flash the firmware, so it's not quite user friendly yet [1] For newer versions you can however extract the API token from the app, and use it to control the vacuum without internet access and block its external internet access, since the vacuum uses a known protocol. [2] [0] https://github.com/Hypfer/Valetudo [1] https://github.com/dgiese/dustcloud/issues/213#issuecomment-... [2] https://github.com/marcelrv/XiaomiRobotVacuumProtocol

If you're playing around with this, it might help to be root on the vacuum. https://github.com/dgiese/dustcloud

Not GP; I have a Roborock S5. But it hasn't run yet. I have yet to get around to rooting it to avoid privacy issues. https://www.iot-tests.org/2019/02/from-the-land-of-smiles-xi... On the upside, apparently once it is rooted and dustcloud installed it is apparently even more responsive as it pretty much stores the database on itself. https://github.com/dgiese/dustcloud As usual, disclaimers apply, YMMV etc etc.

I've had the Xiaomi one for a couple of years, the one with lidar. It's great. Used to love watching the app as the little guy gets to work and the map starts building realtime. It runs Ubuntu, you can root it. And even get spotify running on it. https://github.com/dgiese/dustcloud https://medium.com/@anxodio/how-to-get-spotify-working-on-yo...

A good way to explore the algorithms of the robot is to set it out to run in the night. At the entrance of the room, set a high obstruction. Set up a tripod. Take long exposure photos every minute or so. Then turn on the lights/wait till day time. Take another photo. Overlay the photos in an editor program. Spot the missing areas. EDIT: here are some examples by other people: https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-robots/lon... And here are some resources if you have a Xiaomi robot vacuum cleaner (also sold as RoboRock) https://github.com/dgiese/dustcloud