Manufacturer issues remote kill command to disable smart vacuum after engineer blocks it from collecting data — user revives it with custom hardware and Python scripts to run offline
10 months ago by spaghettiwestern to c/technology
An engineer got curious about how his iLife A11 smart vacuum worked and monitored the network traffic coming from the device. That’s when he noticed it was constantly sending logs and telemetry data to the manufacturer — something he hadn't consented to. The user, Harishankar, decided to block the telemetry servers' IP addresses on his network, while keeping the firmware and OTA servers open. While his smart gadget worked for a while, it just refused to turn on soon after. After a lengthy investigation, he discovered that a remote kill command had been issued to his device.
I agree with you that this should be illegal. I expect this was in the terms of service, though. Since we have no laws restricting this kind of bullshit, the company can argue that they're within their rights.
We need some real legislation around privacy. It's never going to happen, but it needs to. We need a right to anonymity but that is too scary for advertisers and our police state.
Terms of service need to stop being treated like law.
They're not law as long as you can afford the lawyers and legal costs to fight them. Which is, of course, the problem and the system working as designed.
Pre-Trump47 I was in the first camp. I'm not going to lie about how long it took me to figure it out. It was always obvious that the system was broken, but I'll admit that for a long time I was foolish enough to believe the system worked well enough that it was worth trying to fix, that the fundamentals were sound and there was enough good there to want to save it.
Recent events have shown and continue to show me how naive I've been, none of this is an accident, it's all part of the poker game and we're all putting in most of the chips that keep it going whether we know it or not. And I have to be thankful that Russia, China, USA, Israel, Europe, and even my own country's governments have made this all so abundantly clear that even I (and hopefully a lot of other people) can finally see it. I'm joining the resistance. Fuck the system and all the crooked people involved in it, it's time for a cyberpunk revolution.
I’d be in favour of a law that prohibits illegal items in terms of service with some massive punishments associated to them. Something like 0.01% of total annual revenue per line item that is illegal per affected customer. You put a law like that into place and you’d find that terms of service would tighten up and become much more reasonable VERY quickly. The revenue gathered from such fines could fund an enforcement agency that receives complaints/reports to investigate and then starts proactively searching through existing terms of service for products. Pay bonuses to employees for each breach found to incentivise the proactive work that funds the agency. Long term it would be zero cost to the taxpayer and would enforce end users’ rights at the same time.
I expect this was in the terms of service, though
While I expect the same, there's also just a reasonablility standard. If Meta and Google updated their TOS to say that users agreed to become human chattle slaves to mine cobalt and forfeit their rights, no court (...right, SCOTUS?...right?) would uphold that. A TOS is a contract, but it's mostly for the protection of companies from liability. Takign active steps to brick someone's device over the device not connecting to it's C2 server (the company had zero evidence this was done intentionally and a router firewall misconfiguration could just have easily done the same thing), is IMO something that should result in a lawsuit.
Thats why any good terms of service have clauses that say if any part of this is deemed unenforceable or not legal or whatever, the rest of the terms remain intact, as I guess at some point in time, people were getting entire documents thrown out based off 1 thing.
How often are the terms of service evident at the time of purchase? It's unreasonable to assume at the checkout that the price is only for a limited time of use. I doubt the put it on the box or on the Amazon page when you purchased stuff like this. Are you supposed to buy it and then return it after reading the fine print in the instruction booklet after opening it up?
When an authoritarian country does it, everyone goes crazy
When a company does it to make more money and take more control, it's just business as usual.
Just like work. If a government tried to treat us like that, we would have a revolution tomorrow. Yet, we've all been groomed into just accepting it.
Unless you are to this terms before you bought the thought I don't see how that's a valid contract.
There needs to be a huge neon orange warning on the Front of these products that explains, clearly, that you don't own it, your privacy will be invaded and the company can disable it at anytime. This will stop people from buying this garbage, and hopefully companies will stop if they want our money.
My life rule is, if it says Smart on it, it's never going to be smart. It will always cause trouble.
IMO "Smart" refers to the lawyers that got paid to write a 900-page TOS that lets a company do whatever they want.
And, unfortunately, a 900 page TOS guarantees that the average consumer never reads it.
No they are sharts
If it were illegal, that would be a huge infraction to FREEDOM®🦅🦅
Unfortunately this is from a Chinese company and China will never make it illegal; hell they’re more likely to pass a law requiring ILIFE to share the personal data with the government than tell them not to collect them. This could be enforced for US based companies but as long as we buy luxury goods from China this is going to be a fact of life.
then they will buy it
My robot vac will only operate when connected to the Internet so it's only allowed to communicate when actually in use. As soon as it returns to the charger Internet access is automatically blocked.
Unfortunately the manufacturer has deliberately made this as inconvenient as possible. If communication is blocked for more than a few hours the vacuum loses all maps and will no longer even load saved maps from the Tuya app. To use it the vac must be powered down and the app killed. Only then can a saved map be restored.
It's too bad it's so useful.
from the Tuya app.
it’s only allowed to communicate when actually in use.
What's the point? The manufacturer is interested in the map of your apartment and usage statistics. What do you think it's sending when not in use? Does it have a microphone or something?
Since I haven't pulled it apart or tried to decrypt the ssl traffic I have no idea whether it has "a microphone or something." That's the point.
Keeping it offline some of the time isn't effective against passive data collection unless you're willing to take the inconvenient step of factory-resetting it each time you're about to use it. Anything it collects it can just hold onto until it next gets the chance to upload.
SmartTVs will hold onto your data as long as they have storage, even through a factory reset. So if you sell it and the next person hooks it up to the Internet then the data is uploaded.
SSL bold of you to assume that
Should have read up on it before buying this crap.
Lol. Read what? Does your TV manual or privacy policy tell you what's being transmitted? Have you ever even bought a connected appliance?
So you're just another Internet "expert". Got it.
I think your comparison to slavery is a bit overblown and minimizes the tragedy of actual slavery. But I agree with the sentiment.
But someone making money off of me without my consent is literally slavery. No one is saying that this form of slavery is equivalent to chattel slavery, so I don’t understand how this minimizes that? Do you also think that wage slavery or forced prison labor are not slavery?
No. This robot vacuum situation is basically the Holocaust, and if you can't see that then you are complicit. /s
Yeah down with the oppressors! Robot vacuums are also people!
No, I don't think it does that at all. People need to be able to see the world in more than just binary choices, "it is, or it isn't". I reject the premise that things can't be in between, that it can't be a little bit of slavery, while still understanding that plantations were a whole lot of slavery. Comparing the similar aspects of things and discussing the things they have in common is not the same as equating them and we can have better discussions if we resist the assumptions that drive us to that conclusion.
I think we also need to keep in mind what slavery actually is, the actual concept of slavery not just the most extensively taught and politically important implementation of it which people tend to confuse and conflate with the concept itself. What happened with the trans-atlantic slave trade is just one example of slavery, it's not the definition, and as a result we need to be clear which concept of slavery we're talking about here.
Slavery is fundamentally about depriving people of their right to choose for themselves. The sadistic violence and cruelty of the slave trade and plantations are the emblematic and possibly inevitable results of that, but it's not what actually defines it. A slave would still technically be a slave even if all the choices being made for them were to make them comfortable and protected while they live in luxury. If they are not allowed to choose anything different for themselves and do not have any personal autonomy to make the choices they want to make, they are a slave to someone or to something. Even kings have sometimes been described as slaves to their position and that is actually true in some ways. That is not "minimizing" slavery, that's simply describing what being a slave is. It's not having the right to choose for yourself.
If modern technology and digital rights management controls are depriving people of their rights to choose for themselves in important ways, then it's totally fair to call it digital slavery.
There are other types of slavery besides American chattel slavery.
There's something not working in this article.
They say it "makes sense" for the device to basically send the plan of your home to some online server, because the vacuum is not powerful enough to process this data on its own. This is already a bit horrifying to me, but okay.
And then when that guy blocked it out, the vacuum "worked for a while" before something sent the kill command through an update.
How come is it still working at all if navigation requires that server?
It's not the navigation that requires the server but the processing of the mapping data.
Which in itself is BS because most of these vacuums come with hardware roughly equivalent of a top of the line smartphone from about 5-6 years ago. They can easily do the raw data to map conversion, even if it's a bit slow and takes 20-30 seconds.
Also if you read the article it specifies that the damn thing is already running Google Cartographer which is a SLAM 3D map builder software - one of the better pro-grade mapping software suites, mind you. So the whole claim of cloud needed for processing is BS.
My VR headset can create pretty accurate 3D maps of my environment like nothing, and it only uses cameras to do so, so I can imagine it's doable.
Then, yeah, it doesn't "make sense" for that thing to externalize that.
It's not that it's impossible, but it requires effort, skill, and time. Instead of hiring a bunch of programmers who would make it run on the device locally, you can just throw the same amount of money at Amazon and it will run whatever unoptimised version of the renderer you stole on some random Chinese forum. As a bonus, you got to enrich a multibillionaire and make a world slightly worse place, which is a second and third priority of every CEO after getting money.
They do process mapping locally, there's no reason for a remote connection other than remote control outside your LAN and data collection.
My vacuum running Valetudo works fine with no internet connection, mapping and all.
I suspected it shouldn't need the connection, but I've never had one of those, so, I didn't know for sure.
It's just that the article gets in a tangent about how the device might require offloading that to online servers... and then it's obviously not the case since the guy made it work offline.
Most services today have user accounts so they can store your information, that way if you get a new phone for example, you can just sign into a new device and your content is there. So the maps, your configurations etc, are all sent to a remote server so it just works.
Having to manually connect to the robot each time, when you might not even be in the same country when you want to connect, doesn't work if it's all done locally.
Companies that want to offer connected services like this but are privacy centric could let you encrypt it before sending it so they can't see what the contents are, but then you need to manage the idiot populace and their inability to properly secure this kind of information. Then, you start getting all sorts of support calls like I lost the encryption key and now I can't access my map! What kind of stupid service makes me remap things when I change phones and forget something!? 1 STAR!
So there's no really getting around sending some data back to the server, but even IF they have it unencrypted, there's no reason other than corporate profit taking to also be using that data. They don't have to, but they will and do.
If I don't own it 100% then reimburse me if you disable it.
As useful a smart device are, it's very annoying that the company behind it are always either: 1) a scumbag that will collect data and will lockdown the device if people doesn't use it their way; 2)incompetent idiots that can't make a good software to save their life. So by using these device you basically have to pick the thing that you're willing to lose.
It's really too bad because robovac save me a lot of time and mental exhaustion.
I specifically got a Dreame L10s Pro Ultra so that I could use Valetudo on it. Got the needed adapter on eBay to do it but have had no time as of late to follow the steps as there are quite a few things needed to get it done.
The devs are very touchy, from what I understand, but I get it as the general public can be vexing to take questions/feedback from.
Nice, I have the exact same one. It is true it takes about 1h and a bit of command line knowledge to do it, so definitely not for everyone.
Yeah, that dude is kind of a dick but on the other hand dealing with bugs in closed source software of big corporations is an even worse experience xD
Having not read the article: “Let’s apply Hanlon’s Razor: Oh, probably it just collects the data locally and caches it until the vendor’s servers are reachable. After a while the data partition was full and it stopped working as this case was never deemed possible when this was developed.”
Having read that the kill command was logged and he found it in the logs: “ok, there are no technical details, so there might still be a misunderstanding, but that’s not what I expected!”
Louis Rossman should do a segment on them.
He did. Where he said the article looked AI generated and so he wasn't going to waste any time with it.
I have just purchased a Dreame L10s Ultra and have had the PCB for a breakout board made and components for setting it up ordered. In a few days I should get the last bits and I will be able to root the device and have it connect to Valetudo managed through Home Assistant. Fully local operation with basically the same features but none of the privacy issues. As soon as I can get it connected I will be able to use it just like a robot I actually own should without some random third party being involved in every single operation.
The mentioning of Valetudo should be more at the top to make people aware of the existing alternatives.
My aged Roborock S5 suddenly stopped working a year ago and only cleaned a very small segment making it effectively useless. Since I knew that data is exchanged with the manufacturer I suspected them to actively prevent the device from working properly to make me buy a new one. Thanks to Valetudo the device is working back again just fine. Meaning there never was a hardware (or software) failure, but a remote issue.
This is why free software is so important. The company can just lie to you about their product and for some reason it isn't illegal. I really want to have a dishwasher and washing machine with an ESP32 controller and free software to control it, ideally with Home Assistant integration, but at this point I can't find anything.
I can see why you would feel that way but I came to a different conclusion. I agree with much of what he says given his position and circumstances.
The project is open source and anyone is welcome to fork it. He is not making something which will make money, provide a living, and secure his station as an open source guru. He is making something because he thinks it should exist and because he finds it interesting. He is not making something for end users, it isn't for them, it is for people who have enough interest and knowledge to figure it out given the massive leg up he has provided already.
This means he does not do a bunch of things that would pull beginner users in. For example, there is not a simple GUI installer for this. He doesn't sell kits to root your device. He doesn't sell little server boxes based on a raspberry pi. He doesn't have an app for quick discovery and configuration. All of these things would entice beginners and therefore induce them to install unsupported firmware on their several hundred to over a thousand dollar robot vacuum.
This would be hell. Each user with a new and unique way of not understanding the instructions would come up with new failures in an area where bricking your very expensive machine is easy. Can you imagine how much of a dick he would have to be to say "Nah, this is super easy, come give it a go" when the outcome would definitely be causing at least some people to lose hundreds of dollars in a few minutes? That would be him acting like a dick.
What he is doing has a second function. I have just ordered my first custom PCB. I have some components on the way and will be doing my second major electronics project once the parts arrive. I am much more experienced on the software end of things so I get all of the basics around using a terminal etc but now I am learning about using the UART interface and while it is a little bit sink and swim I am at a level where I understand how far outside my knowledge base this is and can take a reasonably informed risk. I am learning and growing and I am actually really excited. If it doesn't work I will know enough to be helped through by the community but my expectation is I will fail at first and maybe take a few weeks to figure it out. Because of that expectation I am not doing this after my last vacuum broke and now I just desperately need this to work, that would add so much stress, instead I am doing this in the least stressful and most enjoyable way possible.
If I had been correctly scared off early I wouldn't have lost a bunch of photos accidentally wiping a drive while installing Linux for the first time, so I would have used virtual machines for longer, but I also would have eventually gotten there. I got there by losing some data, but if I had a community around me it would have been better. He actively encourages community building and sharing knowledge. I think that is cool and would be an awesome outcome. I know I will be posting about my spare adapters once I am done making them to see if anyone else wants to learn how to do it.
A detailed room-mapping scan is basically a wealth report disguised as vacuum telemetry: square footage, room count, layout complexity, “bonus” spaces like offices or nurserie; all of it feeds straight into socioeconomic profiling. And once companies have that floor plan, they’re not just storing it; they’re monetizing it, feeding it into ad networks, data brokers, and pricing algorithms that adjust what you see (=and what you pay) based on the shape of your living space.
And a mapped floor plan also quietly exposes who lives in the home, how they move, and what can be inferred from that.
Property records won’t tell companies how many people are living at a unit, who they are, how they use the space, when they use the space, how they arrange the furniture, etc., and they don’t provide live data streams from your house.
I hadn't really thought about how the furniture is arranged. I wonder if that's something they sell to designers so they can then see what's trending. Some of them don't use cameras, but use lidar, but still getting an overall shape of things would seem useful to a designer.
You know rough dimensions you don’t have a robot going through and literally mapping every item on the floor, high traffic areas , details about amount of people that live there, possible pets, and then tying it to your IP and then selling that to advertisers.
The crazy thing isn’t that they do that it’s that you have to pay money for an item that then does that without your permission and if you attempt to stop it they brick your item that you paid hundreds of dollars for
I don’t know for certain if they sell your data (but they probably do) but you can use a wifi router and how it reflects in a room you can fully map a room with enough accuracy that you can tell what a person is typing on a keyboard which is kind of terrifying if you think about it
This guy fucks!
The answer to all your questions is "fried green tomatoes"
You might get some snarky comments, but the way I envision it is that the fuller of a picture companies can get of you (when you’re running a vacuum, when you’re driving, when your lights are on and off, etc.) the more data they have to try and run predictive analytics on your behavior and that can be used in a variety of ways that may or may not benefit you. At this point it’s mostly just to get you to buy things they think you’ll buy, but what happens when your profile starts to match up with someone who commits crimes? Maybe you get harassed by the authorities a little more often? Generally the lack of consent around how the data is collected and how it’s used is the problem most people have.
what happens when your profile starts to match up with someone who commits crimes?
I'd dismiss this as fanciful ten years ago. But we've got ICE agents staking out grocery stores and flea markets looking for anyone passably "illegal". Palantir seems to have made a trillion dollar business model out of promising an idiot president the ability to Minority Report crime. And then you've got the Israeli's Lavendar AI and "Where's Daddy" programs, intended to facilitate murdering suspects by bombing the households of relatives.
I guess it wouldn't hurt to be a little bit more paranoid.
One aspect to consider is exactly what data these devices are exfiltrating from your network. You usually can't see the contents of the telemetry sent, but given that a LOT of smart devices have cameras and/or microphones, do you really trust that your IoT devices are not sending back audio and or video recordings of the inside of your house?
If they brick your device for wanting privacy, why should you trust them?
I don't think any compatible machines can be acquired in my region any more. The only one I saw semi recently had a revision a few years ago but no packaging or model change to match so you can't verify if its the older model that works or the newer one that doesn't.
I am planning to make a list of devices I really do NOT want near me. Starting with this one.
Gonna be a long list....
Time to run off into the forest I suppose
How is this legal?
Shitty terms of service.
I was thinking about getting one but I learned that they do require a lot of maintenance like cleaning the brushes and you have to change parts regularly. That sounds like more work they just sweeping from time to time. Also, broom has a lower carbon footprint.
Ours has needed very little maintenance and has quickly become a necessity because it gets the floors much cleaner that we ever did. An unexpected consequence is that the whole house stays cleaner because we still spend some of the time and energy we were spending on sweeping on other cleaning tasks.
As much as the thing irritates me you'd have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.
I guess it depends on your use case. I know people with pets love them because sweeping hair is a lot of work. Probably the same with kids. For us with no pets or kids there's really not that much sweeping.
Yeah, ours mops the floor every other day too. It’s really a game changer, having shining floors all the time has benefited me in myriad ways!
I also enjoy using the remote control feature to troll our cats while I’m at work.
There are privacy concerns, (mine is a Dreame), but we are already so far from an ironclad privacy operation that I feel keeping my wife from the purchase would be needlessly cruel.
I bought one and was disappointed to realise that i still need to (manually!) tidy up the rooms (kids' toys, cats' toys etc) for it to have good effect. yes, i am not very smart.
Had a kill command actually been sent, or does the device just not work without a remote server talking to it every so often?
Because the second one is probably worse from a "what if this company goes bust" standpoint.
Not to fear! Here is the relevant part so the next person coming by doesn't have to read the article:
deep in the logs of his non-functioning smart vacuum, he found a command with a timestamp that matched exactly the time the gadget stopped working. This was clearly a kill command, and after he reversed it and rebooted the appliance, it roared back to life.
(Image credit: Harishankar)
So, why did the A11 work at the service center but refuse to run in his home? The technicians would reset the firmware on the smart vacuum, thus removing the kill code, and then connect it to an open network, making it run normally. But once it connected again to the network that had its telemetry servers blocked, it was bricked remotely because it couldn’t communicate with the manufacturer’s servers. Since he blocked the appliance’s data collection capabilities, its maker decided to just kill it altogether. "Someone—or something—had remotely issued a kill command,” says Harishankar. “Whether it was intentional punishment or automated enforcement of 'compliance,' the result was the same: a consumer device had turned on its owner.”
it was bricked remotely because it couldn’t communicate with the manufacturer’s servers.
That bit seems inaccurate... if it couldn't communicate it wasn't bricked remotely... it was more like digital seppuku.
Earlier in the article he says that he only disabled some of the network connections but he left open the ones for firmware updates and stuff so to me it's not impossible that it was able to receive remote commands although I would certainly want to see more technical details to satisfy my curiosity.
The article says in words that it was a remote command. But again, we don't have any details supporting that description. So maybe the journalist got it wrong.
Furthermore, the engineer made one disturbing discovery — deep in the logs of his non-functioning smart vacuum, he found a command with a timestamp that matched exactly the time the gadget stopped working. This was clearly a kill command, and after he reversed it and rebooted the appliance, it roared back to life.
That is precisely why you should not buy such junk.
Yeah, mine has it. I have to go into the app once a week and manually delete it.
Smart vaccuum that needs an app to use. Are we really this stupid, everyone?
Hello friend.
This seems like a good time to inform you that you have the option to communicate in such a way that you don't make yourself look like an asshole.
I wish companies would at least offer a "no data collecting/selling" price option. Like, how much would they make from selling my data? Just give me the option to pay that extra amount so I can buy a vacuum without thinking about how it's spying on me.
My concern is that they'll include the equipment for spying on you, and just enable it later.
I bought a Hue because it said "no online account required!" Later they changed their mind.
I want the promise plus open standards and a base of libre software. I want them to tie themselves to the mast.
Yeah, good point. Owners of Samsung "smart" refrigerators started seeing ads on them recently.
I'm sure there was some sort of legal terms that users had to agree to to enable that, but it still feels like a scam. Some amount of those fridge owners would not have bought the fridge if they knew there would be ads on it at any point in time.
I mean, if I felt I could control the little computer in a smart fridge without expending excessive effort to do so, I might be interested in getting one myself. Absent other concerns, a tablet integrated into my fridge could be handy to monitor the appliance, make quick or even automated grocery list updates, etc. Not earth shattering, but still marginally useful.
There are older models you can get that work that way. They're just less convenient in that you have to clean them out yourself. I had one for a long time, but I wanted one that is self-emptying.
Same story with this guy (in french)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGMRUiBOFj0
Highly recommend watching his stuff, might be very technical but also super methodical
remote kill command had been issued to his device.
What the actual fuck?!
what...? how much money did that Roomba cost for him to spend that much time and effort on recoding it?!
He did it for the greater good. Clearly he'll never be a politician with that level of integrity.
First, it isn't a roomba, second it says in the article how much it cost, third some people have hobbies and sometimes those hobbies are tinkering, dismantling and hacking things they supposedly own and that sometimes leads to revelations like this. Hope that helps.
Ok thx
https://codetiger.github.io/...
And just like that, my $300 smart vacuum transformed into a mere paperweight.
I'm not part of the problem I'm the whole damn thing, at least according to my psychiatrist
This is every single 'smart device' out there. The way I was able to block everything in 2 Roborocks at home was by setting them up in Home Assistant over Matter, blocking everything and using it from HA only (us the schedules, those remain in the robots). It's less than convenient allowing it access to the update servers once per month to see if there's any and then blocking it again, but it's something.
We're preparing our 'smart home' for our new house that's not finished yet by choosing only devices that are matter over wifi (not thread) so that I can set it all up to work locally ove Home Assistant. That, in my opinion, is the best way to keep some convenience while shutting those assholes out.
Most of them, sure. Every single one until proven otherwise, yes. Every single one, no qualifiers? No.
Brands like Shelly allow you to completely disable the cloud, which AFAIK makes them stop phoning home completely except for update checks.
I think a lot of “Home Assistant certified” brands are good privacy-wise, as that means that they don't care about pushing you onto their proprietary cloud.
We could still live in caves, but most of us have chosen not to. I'm personally of the opinion that every advancement that gives you more time to do things that are important to you are worth it. This doesn't mean inviting every piece of spyware some company tries to thrust upon me is acceptable, either.
Reject bottom feeder, Embrace Rigid vacuum.
broom chads stay winning
Jesus christ, just vaccuum your own house already. This is the largest tradeoff I have ever seen for the minor inconvenience of a single household chore.
This comment is fucking insane lol
I dont even vacuum. I get on my knees and clean my floors by hand.
I can't do that, I have bone spurs (actually though)
That's why this invasive tech is criminal. Just plain criminal.
Funhole@lemmy.sdf.org -ahh title
Did you have a stroke?
That's like a month old news article
No one should be outraged. That is how all robovacs are working - use LIDAR to map area -> send back to server -> server calculates optimal cleaning route -> sends back info to vac -> vac cleans. Vac cant ping back to server - server thinks vac is dead. No killswitch is needed.
Also, app is not a necessity except we are forced to use it. But many would not like to lose an ability to track progress or start and stop cleaning from their phone outside of the home network. For these features, app and external server is a must.
The only real issue with robo vacs is that it is an IoT device. We should make manufacturers and brands to let us choose if we want to selfhost their software. But that would never happen.
This article IMO is full of bs and ragebait.
What I don't understand is why the person that owns the device wrote the following in their blog post:
How could a simple IP block disable a vacuum cleaner that is supposed to work offline as well? - Source
This seems like that device was sold to him as "offline" capable. Where does that claim even come from? From a cursory glance I don't see that product advertised that way anywhere.
Now, I'd be totally in favor that such devices working offline should be the norm, but then again, the person writing the blog should know how these devices currently work.
Say, if he got it because it was advertised as an offline device then why would he connect it to wifi anyway? The more I read this article, the more questionable this so called "IT specialist" is.
This is how it has been for a long time - robovacs do talk to a server. Should it? Not necessary. But they undeniably do.
Pretty much everything you said is incorrect, except for the article age. Valetudo literally wrote software that does this on multiple models locally, including mapping. The response of the manufacturers whose models were capable of this was to release new versions where this wasn't an option. As for servers and local control, there are a number of solutions for those with the knowledge and hardware to set it up, and the only thing stopping robovac companies from supporting this is (less) money.
Play stupid games win stupid prizes.
I have a standard vacuum. I spend about 10 minutes a day vacuuming. Miele has no telemetry whatsoever lol
Ugh. Stop shaming people for wanting to automate mundane tasks. No one's playing a stupid game here, the problem isn't robot vacuums. The problem is that manufacturers insist on holding features hostage on the basis that you connect said vacuum to the Internet, so they can harvest (and then sell) your data. Be mad at that, not at normal people wanting to make a boring chore less burdensome.
Yup. A good robot vacuum is an amazing quality of life thing if you have lots of furry pets. They’re not great for deep cleaning, but they’re fantastic for daily maintenance. Just have it run every day after you leave for work, and you never start to accumulate fur. You just need to touch up the corners and edges every now and then.
The real issue is that the makers seem absolutely laser-focused on packing as much data collection into the things as they possibly can. There’s no real reason for it except capitalism.
Imagine making fun of people for using a dishwasher or a clothes washer/dryer. Those are tasks that can be easily automated, so why wouldn’t you? Until recently, manufacturers were happy to ship those things without the invasive data collection. Pretty much everyone would agree that a washing machine beats spending 6 hours a week hunched over a washboard and hot water basin. And a clothes dryer allows you to do the laundry even when it has been rainy and cold for six fucking weeks, which would make a clothesline impractical. The automation isn’t the problem. An automated vacuum is no different, except for the fact that it has wheels. The problem is the manufacturers shoehorning data collection into fucking everything.
speak for yourself. I enjoy vacuuming! I have a small space so it doesn't take as long to vacuum.
Disagree. My experience is they still don't get everything, can't do furniture or corners well or under furniture. They're stupid. They're expensive and if you really can't spend 10 minutes or less to vacuum your house daily or every other day it speaks volumes on the type of person you are.
I stand by what I said. More money than brains.
They're not a replacement for a regular vacuum/broom, they're a supplement. This is like complaining that the washing machine can't completely remove red wine stains by itself. And there are robot vacuums at every price point, just like normal vacuums.
I'm glad you can vacuum your whole house in 10 minutes, but the rest of us don't live in a shoebox and have pets with fur. You making judgments on a person's character based on the chores they want to make easier speaks volumes about the type of person you are, you soggy walnut.
Disagree, and I think you're stupid for putting people down for using these. The data harvesting is the big issue, but let's ignore that for a second.
You're right that they don't do a great job at getting everything, but if you use it to maintain a level of cleanliness alongside vacuuming then that shortcoming doesn't really matter much. Instead of vacuuming 10 minutes every single day, you could do it once a week and have the robot do it between vacuums. If somebody travels for work and is away from home regularly then using these things is actually a good fit.
But go off, friend. Keep flexing that you're superior for doing a mundane task for 10 minutes every day. Everybody else is stupid except for you.
Yeah good for you, but that's hardly the point now is it? There is nothing wrong with automating stuff like this and expecting it to work without bullshit like the post happening.
yeah, this kinda makes no sense on why they want to harvest your data using a Roomba... but I guess they'll do anything for data....
The point is it's stupid and people who want to automate 10 minutes out of their day are equally stupid
Yes and the point being spending 300$+ to eliminate 10 minutes a day is absolutely hilarious.
Spending $300 to eliminate 60 hours per year makes sense to me.
There are potential security holes in the device you wrote and posted that comment from, so if they are exploited, can I make the following comment?:
Play stupid games win stupid prizes.
I have stationary I use to write letters to people. I spend about 10 minutes a day writing letters. Paper and pen have no telemetry whatsoever lol
I gotta say, I've never really found the appeal of the self-propelled vacuum cleaners. They're incredibly finicky and prone to getting snagged on surfaces. They don't have particularly good suction and their waste storage is minimal. Tons of moving parts that wear through easily over time. Belts, fans, and wheels all get worn away from the device's heat and exhaustive regular use.
The time savings is minimal and the expense is extraordinary. I just don't think its worth the trouble.
I used to have a Roomba in my apartment. I had a small step that was about 2 inches off the ground, and the Roomba kept falling off of it. It got caught on a small area rug that I had; it was pretty fluffy, so that it kept getting caught on the floofs was valid. but the Roomba could not clean up my cats litter. it just ran over it. absolutely no suction power in that thing. I eventually sold it on Facebook for 15 dollars. I paid about 400 dollars for it to do nothing at all. I then purchased a Dyson for 500 dollars. I still have it. it works perfectly.
Miele
Worst designed appliance we own.
Xiaomi vacuum (that works without their terrible app) is better.
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The fact that this isn't considered outright fraud is disturbing. This person OWNS the device, yes? They're not leasing it.
FFS, this should be illegal.
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