Awesome project! I would love to buy some robovacs, but I don’t want some unknown entitity mapping our home and whatnot. Our maid would love it too. Being done earlier for the same pay 😁
I would actually be more interested in custom firmware for our old touch-and-go Roomba. The hardware is great, fully modular, did even survive a round of cat barf and washing. But the firmware is buggy and does inefficient vacuuming rounds.
I would actually be more interested in custom firmware for our old touch-and-go Roomba
The only thing out there that I know of is https://valetudo.cloud/
Which is basically only a on-device proxy to prevent communications.
But thanks.
3real5me…the amount of time and money needed to make even simple projects robust and truly usable, and not just a janky DIY job that needs to be used in just the right way or it’s wonky is always more than you expect. No matter how many times you’ve been through the process.
I think my device is easy and intuitive to use. The user wants video instructions and refuses to use my thing otherwise :(
I tend to consider first attempts/versions as Betas. Sometimes I will do the full alpha, beta, RC cycle
Freedman has a pretty good video relating to this
Ha, let’s hope that doesn’t happen here. This is genuinely exciting.
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Is “OOMWOO” an onomatopoeia for a vacuum cleaner’s sounds?
Is there a word for a palindrome that works when you rotate it 180 degrees?
About the name: “oomwoo” is a rotational ambigram — it reads the same flipped 180°, just like the robot itself roaming your floor in every direction.
Taken from the blog post.
If I have an old Roomba can I hack a new brain into it? I’ve got a Raspberry Pi and a soldering iron and a willingness to break them for science. Never done much hardware hacking though.
Technically yes GPIO -> pin headers of each physical control.
You can tell it’s a genuine high-quality open-source project because the name sucks
Can’t wait to hear your marketing ideas
YOURMOMMA
It’s called OOMWOO in all caps dude. My idea is, call it literally anything else. Also I’m getting one
The name apparently is a rotational ambigram. I would have sworn it was a transdimensional mammogram
How about WOOOOM
Or vwoomba
Something much better like eufy? Or roomba?
I think it’s a law that robot vacuums must be named something silly.
I have no objections. If it doesn’t connect to the wider internet, could be cool
Like, even just SelfVac or whatever would be good…
“I’ve been SelfVack’n it all day long.”
VacBot, HoovrBot AutoVac, AutoHoovr…there’s just so many options for names that describe what it is
I propose renaming it to SUCKS cos that’s what vacuums do.
The game changer in robot vacs for me was the emptying station. My first one didn’t have it and it just sat in the corner. Full.
Doesn’t that lock you in to a specific type of bag that only the robot manufacturer creates?
It does but I am still on my first ten pack so …
Also there are for sure some alternative bags, I just didn’t put time in to find them.
Same.
Though I’m not a vacuum cleaner, I just eat a lot. And I will also cry.
O M O
O W OI heard it runs on UWU/Linux
I’m surprised they didn’t go for more of a wide-mouth D bot design like the old neatos did. And a pi5 is hardly affordable in 2026. If it’s local only, does it really need the processing power of a pi? It’ll be on a home network with something running homeassistant anyway. Give it a dumb controller and make it like a wireless klipper bot, the heavy lifting done on the server.
They do mention it is undecided yet and an esp32 is an option. For me that would be ideal but I can also imagine some devs just want some kind of linux where they can run python scripts on.
Or even a zero 2w
i ordered one of those two months ago and the expected delivery date in 2027…
Dude go to microcenter. Or get an orangepi or radxa board.
man i wish we had those in the eu. them and jeff geerling
Sick, but also in the mean time check out the Valetudo project
Looks pretty cool but a very short list of compatible devices. Also, what they consider “budget options” are not what I would consider “in my price range”. LoL 😂
I love valetudo!
But I also think there should be more open source robotics, and a robot vacuum feels the right topic as a starting point.
I think I also saw someone that wanted to make a robot grass cutter.
As i understand it Valetudo is not actually firmware to control the robot. It is a “parasite” that makes the existing robot firmware belive it is connected to the cloud which is very different from actually controlling and navigating the robot. However, in terms of homeasistant integration it could be worth getting inspired.
For a control operating system ROS could be something to consider. When I used it 10 years ago the project was quite unstable since tools changed constantly and it was overly complicated to work with, but a lot of development has happened since so maybe worth considering.I wrote this before reading the articleThis is why I love foss software. Their is some guy hacking away at some very specific problem in his own time and he shares it with the world for free. You will have never heard of this problem or even contemplated its existence but once u know some foss developer has solved it going back to a world where it doesn’t exist is just a little bit duller.
… oomwoo?
Sorry, I need to look this up on Squeam.
Hey, on Mreesh, somebody said its a scam!
… But then LikkiiLiikkii says its legit.
Hrm, I wonder what Gronk thinks…
About the name: “oomwoo” is a rotational ambigram — it reads the same flipped 180°, just like the robot itself roaming your floor in every direction.
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with a name like that, I really hope that it has a boot-up sound option where it makes an awoo boot noise.
I’ve been interested in Kärcher since it’s German and has better privacy laws than the US branded stuff. But this would be interesting. The Kärcher though is on sale for $400USD on their site, tough to beat. 🤕
Might also take a look at the ones from Bosch. I got the Spotless Max (without cam) and am pretty happy with it. But I also got no comparison to competitors how they perform.
I love this! I’ll be following along :)
This looks cool! Nice!
