this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2025
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I bought a $300 fake Roomba thing. It was on clearance.
And i fought against it for years. But ended it up coming in clutch for a lot of reasons.
It did not have an app, just a IR controller. Its pretty dumb. It bumps into everything. It gets stuck under things. I sometimes have to create a maze so it cleans a specific spot.
Its been a habit of mines to avoid anything with an app that requires internet access. But the product lines are shrinking, and I know at some point, if I want a Roomba, I'll need to invite always-on AI or whatever.
You can have the best of both worlds. There's a lot of smart home stuff that isn't owned by a corporation. For vacuums, Valetudo is amazing and fun to set up, if not a little nerve wracking risking bricking your expensive appliance.
There's some models that work with Matter and a local home server. There's also a couple you can flash with open source software to keep it all local.
For those interested, there are some vacuum models listed on this project: https://valetudo.cloud/
It can get technical (since they want people to learn), but the documentation is pretty detailed.