Oomwoo, an open-source robot vacuum you build yourself

skyberrys•about 1 hour ago

The name is exciting to me. I've been a multiple time robot vacuum owner and it does have an appeal to be able to see a fresh build dissected like this. Why not contribute to this project instead of having a go all on my own, except of course with my AI helpers. I could pick the vacuum control board for the motors and sensors. I have some thoughts on brushes too.

It's a good point, vibe coding does lend itself to fast splitting among developers with the intent of recombining quickly too into a larger project.

shaunkoh•about 3 hours ago

Even though it’s vibe coded, I like the idea of an open source repairable robot vacuum. The current generation of them are notoriously not built to last / be repairable.

fluidcruft•about 2 hours ago

Agreed. I can code so I don't care whether it's vibecoded or whatever to bootstrap. Them working on designing hardware is what matters to me. I'll definitely keep an eye out for the kit, I don't have a lot of patience for hunting parts but would love to play with this.

throwaway219450•about 2 hours ago

The issue I have is the documentation and “status” is slop. Looking at the repo, how much of it is even real?

There’s supposed to be a build-along on YouTube but nothing there yet. The BoM is a bunch of aliexpress modules which is ok, but what about the chassis? Is that image generated?

The RFC calls to generate accurate models for the components, but the render looks like a full assembly?

fluidcruft•about 2 hours ago

When they get to the point of shipping a kit, why would I care? It's open source, just fix things. It's not rocket science, I'm just no good at working out the baseline machine that has parts to do the things. So I can't help at this point.

I don't expect a finished product. The value to me is the customizability and figuring out how to make it do what I want it to do. I'm sure that's not for everyone but like I have fingers. I can type. I can fix things. Slop is perfectly fine as a first draft because I'm envisioning a community of builders not a bunch of entitled twats who should just buy a Roomba.

sqdiaz•about 2 hours ago

Personally, I find open hardware to be the selling point for devices that are supposedly running open source. If I can't change the parts/components, there's really no point.

frio•about 4 hours ago

I am bone tired of slop. This looks like a useful thing to build (the cameras in existing closed source robo vacuums creep me out), but when people don't even write their announcement blog post by hand it gives me zero confidence in the project getting anywhere meaningful.

Perhaps not the place to share this, but it's depressing. I hope this proves me wrong.

jimnotgym•28 minutes ago

Isn't a AI generated blog post better than someone building a useful thing and nobody hearing about it?

Systemerror7A69•7 minutes ago

It's a bit of an indicator about the effort they put into it. If they don't even write their blogpost themselves the question of "how much effort and thought did they put into the rest of their code / product".

Now, obviously they might just be bad at writing blogposts but surprisingly often it seems to be a decent red flag.

Because the thing is that the less effort you put into that the more anyone can just...reproduce the idea with their own LLM.

Even if s.o buil a cool thing and wants to share it with the world, if all they did was prompt Claude for a weekend what is stopping me from just doing it myself? Then I can even get it however I want.

Gigachad•10 minutes ago

The AI slop is noise pushing out valuable posts someone put effort in to.

holistio•about 3 hours ago

I just can't say how much I want to see the growth of open hardware.

AussieWog93•about 3 hours ago

Man I wish was able to participate in this project.

teddyh•about 4 hours ago

No information about whether it will run Valetudo.

darlachaps•about 3 hours ago

Why would it run Valetudo? Thats a product for rooted, closed-source vacuums.

Let alone why would someone want to attract the toxic culture that is the Valetudo creator and community?

This project seems like AI slop, but at this point that’s better than toxic dictators.

Oomwoo, an open-source robot vacuum you build yourself

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Discussion (16 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews