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