....then proceeded to get stoned and watch it roam the house, doing it's thing.
And then it dawned on me - I now have a completely self-contained autonomous robot that is free to roam my house, not attached to any cloud services, doing actually productive things; and I have full control over it.
I know it's an odd thing for a grown-ass man to get excited over, but I can attest to the fact that 14 year-old me would be over the fucking moon about this. My parents got me the first Lego Mindstorms set for Christmas when I was younger, and I had an old Palm V handheld from my uncle; I managed to figure out how to control the Mindstorms controller with the Palm V's built-in IR blaster, using just a "universal remote" app.
How far we've come.... Just accomplishing this has given me a renowned motivation for self-hosting shit; it's incredibly freeing. And knowing that the manufacturer of this vacuum could access it at any point and just outright shut it off without my knowledge.... I don't have to deal with that anymore.
The robot is a Wyze "Robot Vacuum" (model WVCR200S), which is based on the 3irobotix CRL-200S - the very same robot one author recently discovered was being intentionally shut off after he had blocked some telemetry URLs. I bought it for $20 on eBay. Fully functional, but the battery only lasted ~10 minutes from a full charge. Luckily it just uses four 18650 cells in series, so replacing those was a pretty simple task. I did not buy a whole new pack (most of them are expensive and falsify their true capacities), rather opting for individual Molicel P30B 3000mAh cells for ~$5 each. I ended up having to peel off the nickel tabs from the old cells and carefully solder them to the new cells, as I don't have a spot welder. Lots of flux and a soldering iron set to 450C were key here. I would not recommend that method π .
Edit: My parents dropped by last night and I gushed about it to them... My dad is a tech guy, so he was pretty interested. My mom was more "I have no idea what you're talking about but I'm happy that you're happy" ππ
Still sounds easier than getting my roborock on valetudo. I had to take the entire thing apart to get to the other side of the mobo to flash the thing. Felt like I needed 3 hands to ground one place while doing a bunch of other things just to get it to flash. My workspace was a mess of screws and tiny robot parts I only half remembered taking out.
In the end it worked and I'm very happy with it. Was sweating for a bit though. It was a $400 vacuum iirc.
Worth it IMO. These things get hella filthy inside. I took mine apart to replace its motherboard, and I'm glad I did because it needed a good cleaning.
LOL Reminds me of when my Jack Russel was a pup, training him to poop outside. Well, one day early in his training, he decided to poop under the dinning room table and I didn't see it. Turned the vaccum loose, and sure enough, it found the poop, smeared it all over the floors and made a complete mess of the guts. I spent the day with a toothbrush and some cleaner. So, yeah...can confirm they do get filthy.
Oh noooooo hahahaha
The previous owner of mine was absolutely a pet owner. It was chock full of fur. Luckily nobody in my house has any pet allergies...
Of you ever feel like you can't find the right screws or it just doesn't hold back together well, just Goop the bastard back together.
So much stuff in my life is now Gooped together - I even Gooped some drives into a desktop that lacked enough mount points.
That stuff is magic in a tube.