Ok so I used to work for iRobot, the OG robot vacuum maker.
Robot vacuums used to vacuum randomly. To make them vacuum systematically, they need to map your house. One cheap way to do that is to use a camera roughly pointing at your ceiling and do Video SLAM. The camera identifies features on your ceiling and how they are changing to know where the robot is and map the room.
I guess ecovac thought they could add a camera feed feature for free since they already had a camera on the robot.
It’s both, I have the Roomba with the camera on the front and it can sometimes avoid dog poop and wires on purpose (and sometimes navigate, but it mostly seems like it navigates like the other models with no cameras by bumping into things that don’t ever move)
The unfortunate, actual reason is that people will pay more markup on the vacuum with useless shit added than it costs to add it. Explaining why humans are like this is unfortunately a less tidy and much more disappointing endeavour.
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Since no one said it yet: Valetudo
Unfortunately no support for Ecovacs.
Yet when I wanted to make my vacuum speak like Consuela from Family Guy I couldn’t do it.
And nobody posted This yet!? The Roomba That Screams When it Bumps Into Stuff
Am I the only one confused by why a vacume needs a live video feed? Who’s sitting there thinking “I want to watch what my vacume sees!”
Ok so I used to work for iRobot, the OG robot vacuum maker. Robot vacuums used to vacuum randomly. To make them vacuum systematically, they need to map your house. One cheap way to do that is to use a camera roughly pointing at your ceiling and do Video SLAM. The camera identifies features on your ceiling and how they are changing to know where the robot is and map the room.
I guess ecovac thought they could add a camera feed feature for free since they already had a camera on the robot.
Huh, I thought they were “dog poop sensors”
It’s both, I have the Roomba with the camera on the front and it can sometimes avoid dog poop and wires on purpose (and sometimes navigate, but it mostly seems like it navigates like the other models with no cameras by bumping into things that don’t ever move)
The unfortunate, actual reason is that people will pay more markup on the vacuum with useless shit added than it costs to add it. Explaining why humans are like this is unfortunately a less tidy and much more disappointing endeavour.
This is the reason I don’t get PS+.
I see the cheapest option, and think “oh…but I don’t go online much, and thats too little value for that high price.”
Then for a little more money you get a little more value.
Then for a little MORE value, you get the retro games from PS1 and PS2.
And then I realize that’s DOUBLE the cheapest option, to play games that are 20-30 years old.
So I put 2 and 2 together, and decide this whole thing is pissing me off. Fuck it, I’ll just emulate the damn things…
imagine now somehow combining its sensor data with outputs from a LLM everyone would think that their roomba has become sentient
True supervillain stuff. :-D
I never thought I’d read about a vacuum being hacked one day.
How could it have been worse. A fucking basic appliance was hijacked. Ofc its not weaponized, that would have made it worse I guess
“I suck!”
— robot vacuum (probably)