Amazon terminates iRobot deal, Roomba maker to lay off 31% of staff

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 245 points –
Amazon terminates iRobot deal, vacuum maker to lay off 31% of staff
cnbc.com

Amazon terminates iRobot deal, Roomba maker to lay off 31% of staff::Amazon and iRobot said regulatory concerns made it impossible for the deal to move forward, sending the Roomba makers' shares plummeting.

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Oh, I might consider buying one again now.

Save yourself the headache and get something that works locally and doesn’t rely on their cloud and app.

True story. I hate all those cloud devices, which can run perfectly locally. And doesn't require a subscription. I even see it back in cars nowadays, stupid subscriptions.

What options are there out of the box? I only know of hacking well known brands and use something like valetudo

I put a wemos d1 mini in mine since all I need to do is mash the existing Clean button. The internal MCU runs on 3.3v, the buttons are pulled low and activated by the same 3.3v rail, so all I had to do was flash it with ESPhome and wire the low side of the buttons to a gpio. I wanted to read the LED state but the multiplex scheme wasn't worth decoding. I did use the single analog pin to measure battery voltage, and an input for the roller and blower motors.

Well done. I can't tell if you're shitposting or if this is legitimately the simplest home automation setup.

That's actually really awesome. Makes me want to get another vacuum

I used Shark Ion RV750 and RV750N. Basically no parts cross over but the layout is very similar. Both were straightforward to interface with and even had a little slot the board fit in!

Ah nice, so they work completely without internet? I somehow assumed they will need internet for first setup

I bought them used, so I don't know about initial setup if you bought a brand new one. But yeah the shark isn't even on my wifi, just the esphome.

Roomba uses local push in HA.

I didn’t realize that so I just went to check on mine and the integration is errored out lol. A quick look on the forums shows that multiple people are having the same issue. When mine was working, I only had a few options like start and go home so it wasn’t that helpful anyways. The roomba app did update with room mapping abilities but I was never able to get that information into home assistant so my only option was a full clean. Maybe it’s changed since mine stopped working but I can’t wait to get something that’s better supported and put this one upstairs where it only has a few rooms to clean.

Reasonably sure i can set up local control through home assistant. Haven’t looked too hard but I’ve always liked the featuresets on the roombas and the Amazon connection was the reason I haven’t done too much investigation yet.

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I’ve been much happier with my Roborock than my Roomba. It definitely seems smarter.

Have them fight to the death

It'd be an easy battle. The last iRobot device I had was a fickle piece of junk that'd error out constantly or ignore virtual walls. I'm on my second Roborock vacuum now and am very impressed with how well they work. I gave my first one away and it's still working great for the person I gave it to.

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