As more and more of the technology that we paid for turns becomes a subscription, there’s slowly been a momentum shift in the open source world of building replacements for these intrusive rent-seekers. We see this all of the time for self-hosted media and communications servers, but now we’re starting to see it in hardware as well. The OOMWOO robotic vacuum cleaner is completely open source, from hardware to software, and requires no cloud services whatsoever.
Although it’s open source, not every component is something one could buy off the shelf. It does require a 3D printer for most of the parts, but assuming that requirement is met most of the rest of the build comes together easily enough. For compute it relies on a Raspberry Pi running ROS 2 software and is set up to integrate easily with other existing open tools and projects such as Home Assistant. Like its proprietary cousins it can sense and map the rooms its placed in, but this platform uses an inexpensive 2D lidar system to keep costs down.
Right now the project is not quite complete, so we’ll all have to keep our eyes on this one as the team building it progresses. But they do have most of the software development done and the bill-of-materials is in progress. As an open project it’s being developed by many volunteers and there are a lot of areas available to contribute to as well, all currently set up on the project’s GitHub page. Right now many of those areas of effort are adapting the 3D printer files to off-the-shelf parts.
With the rocky status of the Roomba ecosystem, projects like this are more important than ever.
Okay OOMWOO is a clever name. Turn your phone upside down.
I don’t get it, I turned my phone upside down but the word on my laptop monitor still reads “OOMWOO”.
Yes i too don’t get it, my TV reads the same, also my back hurts
I’m guessing it’s so you can read it in any direction that it’s moving across the floor?
It is because their outdoor version is called “MOOOOW” :)
The shop vac I use to vacuum my home is a metal bucket on castors, a switch, a generic chinese engine, a switch and some bits of wire. Cleaning the floor is light duty work so I expect it to last for another 10 years or so.
Roombas and open source alternatives look complex as f࣭uck compared to this.
I have one of those myself, but I only just realized, it’s literally a bucket of suck.
Of course they do, as the Roomba like things have to add all the complexity of your human brain and body into the oversized hockey puck.. The actual suction path type stuff is pretty simple, and not very different to you bin with a motor though usually far far smaller to make the rest of it easier. As it is the autonomous navigation and locomotion skills, self emptying, self charging stuff that you the human do that make it complex.
Yes sure but doing the hoovering is time where you could have been doing something interesting or at very least productive
This sounds amazing and I’ll be following it with interest.
My only concern is the RPi at its core. Last I looked they don’t have proper low power states so it’ll still chew power when not in use.
But maybe they are doing some cleverness to turn it fully off when docked.
Is the dock not a charger? And could the dock not have enough smarts to power it on and off?
rpi at its core! does it leave the sd card mounted rw, with logs trickling onto it 24/7?!!!
Looks like AI slop https://github.com/makerspet/oomwoo/issues/35
I will be so happy when kids find a new phrase to use instead of slop.
Pick a better word that means “awful stuff, hastily strewn where it doesn’t belong and isn’t wanted, and will be near impossible to get removed”
SLOP is a fantastic term for it.
You SHOULD be reacting with revulsion at the very idea.
Zero effort.
Ruins whatever it gets applied to.
Makes you angry at the person who was careless/negligent enough to even consider releasing it.
SLOP.
It’s AI generated code and maybe a mature level. Much like my own code, you wouldn’t call it slop, because it’s functional, mostly, but you might call it a mature or inelegant.
so far it is just AI generated markdown
Urgh hit by the software keyboard plague.
“at an immature level” that should have read
Everythjng ai is ai slop to people that are anti ai
Everything*
Please use AI slop next time, to avoid typos
Right? I can code, but I can’t code as fast as someone using AI, so in order for me to keep up I have to use it myself. Why would I use a wrench on a bolt when I could use a drill? Is that considered mechanic slop? I use it to quickly whip up prototypes, like a stand alone macOS app to control my Toyota (remote start, locks, sensors, etc) which didn’t exist otherwise, and the amount of work required to reverse engineer the phone app api calls was just insane, so I let my agent do it. It had a fully working app in about an hour that was feature-rich, had that Apple app look, and worked great. I haven’t released it because people are scared of the steam engine all over again.
An ai has a chance to make a mistake
Your wrench metaphor is wrong.
GenAI isn’t your work.
It is other people’s work, given to you and used without permission or attribution.
Why would I build my own bike when there is a shady guy I can pay a few tokens to who will just give me a bike? Apparently no one cares that he stole them all.
Yeah, fancy graphics and some text, nothing you can actually build or use. It’s just missing a kickstarter page ;)
Henry! Simple hoover does what it says on the tin, long lead simple manual wind up lead retraction, no batteries.
As a long term henry owner, can I ask how often youve replaced the exposed to conductive dust mosfet open pcb power board in the newer soft start models? Or did you bypass the board and fit a dpdt switch when it failed the first time at 3 years or so like most longer term owners who tinker…
Henry build quality (minus the unprotected mosfet stupidity), on batteries and remixed with control hardware from this project would be nirvana… Probably not attainable due to the power requirements of the suction motor though.
As someone who worked for an LG warranty agent. That sounds very reliable.
I wish eufy would be more open but sadly they are the only ones who can deal with pet fur without breakign and can still be cleaned nicely
For a couple of days our Shark start vacuuming at 3 A.M. , the app was installed on my wife’s phone I thought she, by mistake, added a routine to start vacuuming at 3 P.M… but, was not the case. One night when it started vacuuming at 3 A.M checked my phone’s wife’s and it wasn’t even connected with the vacuum. Was 2 options, a ghost or a funny hacker i opted for deleting my wife Shark account and creating a new one, 2 years and nothing like that happened again. I think the ghost isn’t so smart and can’t figure the password yet. The cloud is a good tool but we forget that is used by good and bad people and you never know the intentions of others to make your life more difficult.
The FOSS project Valetudo (also mentioned in the linked article about Roomba) supports quite a few robots from different brands.
If you manage to flash it on your bot, it sits there alongside the original firmware, basically replacing the cloud.
The ways of flashing vary, i used a breakout board to flash my dreame bot, and it works great. I control it via its physical buttons or a web interface (over local wifi only).
I think you can also integrate it into home assistant.
It’s an AI generated project, you can see the telltale signs everywhere.
In my opinion, you can’t just throw models up in a GitHub and claim you have a full project. If it hasn’t been printed and assembled atleast one time, the model files mean nothing.
I’m seeing an influx of projects like this, that sound like someone put “make me an open source robot vacuum” into a prompt.
All the progress and code comes right out of Claude and ChatGPT. Sorry, that’s not a real project, and I’m not interested.
hard wood floors at my house so the daily clean up is a broom and i have a technique i’m surprised to see other people don’t seem to use?? so maybe it’s a hack??
i hold the broom with one hand, with my hand at about the midpoint of the broomstick, wrapped around the outside of the broom (so it is natural to pull it towards me with my hand). the top of the broom stick is nestled in my elbow. Effectively, when i pull my hand towards me, the broomstick is pushed in two locations…towards me at the and, and away from me at my bicep. It’s roughly as if the broom stick was lashed to my fore-arm.
So i can use it one-handed without setting down the dust pan. Seems really obvious to me but every time i happen to have seen someone sweep lately, they are either doing it two-handed and struggling to keep track of the dust pan. Or they are doing it one handed but with only one point of contact, and struggling to control the broom.
Lots of dust and grit in the cracks on your floor. Over a hundred years ago use of a broom indoors was condemned by hoover advertising. Nothing has changed, vacuuming is productive work.
This project is fake. There’s only a repo with AI text. Why is it mentioned here?
Not only is this project completely AI-generated with effectively nothing to show for itself…but I’m starting to think that Hackaday.com is, as well.
I’m a bit disappointed with all the hate this project seems to be getting. I’m on the projects discord and have made suggestions and had dialog with several of the people working on the project. Yes the project as a whole has/is using AI for a lot of the documentation and such but there are real people putting the work in behind the scenes.
Sure, it is more AI than I would necessarily like but I totally understand the desire to use tools to make life easier. If AI enables people with a vision and interest to complete a project they would otherwise struggle with or not be able to complete then I’m all for it.
God forbid you use a lighter to start a fire. Real fires are started by twisting a stick till your palms bleed. People are just scared of change because the tools aren’t perfect just yet, but look at us now, flyiing machines and fast transportation that don’t eat hay. Some of the same people hating AI programming are the same people with FSD Autopilot Teslas sleeping during commutes.
Could it incorporate fiducial marker recognition for better navigation, small tags placed around the home in discreet location could really help