Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oomwoo, an open-source robot vacuum you build yourself

makerspet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 105 posts

Re: Oomwoo, an open-source robot vacuum you build yourself

#41

Post by oliwarner »

The hardware is an issue, not because it's bad but because it's massively expensive to buy the components piecemeal.

You can purchase a lidar vac for £70-80 now. Even if you only replaced the brains, that's a quarter of the price of a Oomwoo. The only upgrade I'd want is self-emptying. You'd probably have to relocate the charging contacts but it seems highly achievable.

Or you could break up an existing vac for the parts. You'd get the lidar, bumper, ToF, cliff sensors, motors and wheels, perhaps even some seals for your printed parts. Again, much cheaper, especially if you shop on the used market (I can get a whole working vac for the price of new wheels). All these robots use common parts so the risk of getting it wrong is very small.

My point is perhaps they could coalesce around a common white label option unit or set of parts currently sold as a vacuum.

Re: Oomwoo, an open-source robot vacuum you build yourself

#42

Post by wanderingmind »

fy20 wrote: post #18
RealityVoid wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you would say that, my Xiaomi s6's wheel motor died, I was bummed about it. I ordered a replacement motor, and to my surprise, I only had to open one or two screws and the motor module popped right out. The module had a nice slitting connector. I put the new motor back in and I was done. The thing must be at least 8 years old by now and it's still chugging along. I now passed it on to my parents and…

Agreed. I have a 6.5 year old Roborock S5 Max, and it still works fine. I've replaced a few parts (can still get on AliExpress), but other than that no issues. It's cleaned 74km2.

Assuming you live in a crazy big house (1000 m2), it cleaned your house 74000 times. Given S5 was released 8 years ago, even approximating it to 10, that's 20 times a day. I can imagine it taking about an hour to do one clean run. Jesus, did it ever stop cleaning

Re: Oomwoo, an open-source robot vacuum you build yourself

#43

Post by actionfromafar »

throwaway219450 wrote: post #13
fluidcruft wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I can code so I don't care whether it's vibecoded or whatever to bootstrap. Them working on designing hardware is what matters to me. I'll definitely keep an eye out for the kit, I don't have a lot of patience for hunting parts but would love to play with this.

The issue I have is the documentation and “status” is slop. Looking at the repo, how much of it is even real? There’s supposed to be a build-along on YouTube but nothing there yet. The BoM is a bunch of aliexpress modules which is ok, but what about the chassis? Is that image generated? The RFC calls to generate accurate models for the components, but the render looks like a full assembly?

> This is genuinely early — and that’s the point

Mmm I love the smell of slop in the morning

Re: Oomwoo, an open-source robot vacuum you build yourself

#44

Post by haellsigh »

oliwarner wrote: post #41

The hardware is an issue, not because it's bad but because it's massively expensive to buy the components piecemeal. You can purchase a lidar vac for £70-80 now. Even if you only replaced the brains, that's a quarter of the price of a Oomwoo. The only upgrade I'd want is self-emptying. You'd probably have to relocate the charging contacts but it seems highly achievable. Or you could break up an existing vac for the p…

For that, there's https://valetudo.cloud/ that supports a number of models from different brands.

Re: Oomwoo, an open-source robot vacuum you build yourself

#45

Post by [deleted] »

jimnotgym wrote: post #21
frio wrote: post #4

I am bone tired of slop. This looks like a useful thing to build (the cameras in existing closed source robo vacuums creep me out), but when people don't even write their announcement blog post by hand it gives me zero confidence in the project getting anywhere meaningful. Perhaps not the place to share this, but it's depressing. I hope this proves me wrong.

Isn't a AI generated blog post better than someone building a useful thing and nobody hearing about it?

[deleted]

Re: Oomwoo, an open-source robot vacuum you build yourself

#46

Post by RobotToaster »

haellsigh wrote: post #44
oliwarner wrote: post #41

The hardware is an issue, not because it's bad but because it's massively expensive to buy the components piecemeal. You can purchase a lidar vac for £70-80 now. Even if you only replaced the brains, that's a quarter of the price of a Oomwoo. The only upgrade I'd want is self-emptying. You'd probably have to relocate the charging contacts but it seems highly achievable. Or you could break up an existing vac for the p…

For that, there's https://valetudo.cloud/ that supports a number of models from different brands.

None are particularly easy to flash, and the dev seems to have no interest in making it more accessible.

Re: Oomwoo, an open-source robot vacuum you build yourself

#47

Post by aaron695 »

oliwarner wrote: post #41

The hardware is an issue, not because it's bad but because it's massively expensive to buy the components piecemeal. You can purchase a lidar vac for £70-80 now. Even if you only replaced the brains, that's a quarter of the price of a Oomwoo. The only upgrade I'd want is self-emptying. You'd probably have to relocate the charging contacts but it seems highly achievable. Or you could break up an existing vac for the p…

[dead]

Re: Oomwoo, an open-source robot vacuum you build yourself

#48

Post by progval »

wanderingmind wrote: post #42
fy20 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I have a 6.5 year old Roborock S5 Max, and it still works fine. I've replaced a few parts (can still get on AliExpress), but other than that no issues. It's cleaned 74km2.

Assuming you live in a crazy big house (1000 m2), it cleaned your house 74000 times. Given S5 was released 8 years ago, even approximating it to 10, that's 20 times a day. I can imagine it taking about an hour to do one clean run. Jesus, did it ever stop cleaning

They probably meant 74000m², not 74km².

Re: Oomwoo, an open-source robot vacuum you build yourself

#50

Post by taffydavid »

actionfromafar wrote: post #43
throwaway219450 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue I have is the documentation and “status” is slop. Looking at the repo, how much of it is even real? There’s supposed to be a build-along on YouTube but nothing there yet. The BoM is a bunch of aliexpress modules which is ok, but what about the chassis? Is that image generated? The RFC calls to generate accurate models for the components, but the render looks like a full assembly?

> This is genuinely early — and that’s the point Mmm I love the smell of slop in the morning

You're right to push back
Post reply on HN