Comment by oliwarner

Gagguino is a great example of this approach, licensing scandal aside†. Espresso machines are expensive and not because the software is particularly clever. They are electrically simple, but mechanically there's a lot of pressurized plumbing that you really don't want to DIY.

The kit is a control board for the pump and boiler, and some add-on sensors for temperature and pressure. The "high end" features that it enables are almost entirely software driven, the main one being temperature control via PID. I've seen even simpler mods for other machines that bypass the "brew" button so you can do things like connect a bluetooth scale to enable brew-by-weight on a machine that doesn't support it, or add a shot timer.

The commercial version of this would be the Decent, but it costs 3x as much. I would love something like this for my robot vacuums. Valetudo is minimally invasive, but there's no reason you couldn't control the vacuum + wheels, but navigation is hard and those sensors are much more complex (can you even access the camera and undistort the image?)

https://gaggiuino.github.io/#/

† they pulled the rug on open firmware

I own three robot vacuums from two different manufacturers that are nearly identical. Exact same charger station that seems to match what Oomwoo uses. My point is that Oomwoo seems to use at least some common parts already.

Yeah I don't think fully open sourced hardware is the play here. For €350 you have a vacuum with home station, with mop, with carpet detection and lift function and with proper software.

I'd rather buy that and change some components to have local software. Similar to what this hobbyist sells for home assistant compatible home ventilation: https://github.com/arjenhiemstra/ithowifi

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

I agree - OpenMover has that approach. Use a COTS mover and change the brains only https://openmower.de/

Sounds very reasonable - I don't have a robot vac at the moment because there are some very large thresholds in my flat and the floor itself in places is very wobbly, but if I had a guide to safely mod one to work for my residence I'd definitely have a go.

> ...it's massively expensive to buy the components piecemeal.

I think the point of this is not to make "a product". It's just a fun project that you can build yourself or participate in some way with it's creation and/or funding.

It's not practical. That's OK.

I think about parallels to custom auto hobbyists. There are a lot of shops that can do incredible builds matching up different parts, engines, suspensions and even large scale chassis mods, but there are comparatively few outfits setup to build the car from scratch. A car is a different scale endeavor than a vacuum but some of the tradeoffs are similar. Maybe the engine, transmission etc mechanical interfaces are more easily modified and adapted than digital electrical software interfaces

This brings up the question: Where does one go to get a white label vac? Say I want to start a robot vacuum company and write my own custom software for it. How do I get a few white label samples from a manufacturer to do that?

> £70-80

Dreame's rebranded Mova starts at something like 350 EUR. Yes it's kinda capable and yet still kinda shit - gets tangled, stuck and needs quite some TLC. It doesn't look like it's going to be very reliable either.

I can't imagine how poorly 70 one can be.

Reminds me of people buying battery stick vacs without checking and then getting disappointed it's not same as dyson (while samsung as actually leads according to project farm tests).

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