Things continue to look bleak for the original robot vacuum maker. iRobot’s third-quarter results, released last week, show that revenue is down and “well below our internal expectations due to continuing market headwinds, ongoing production delays, and unforeseen shipping disruptions,” said Gary Cohen, iRobot CEO, in a press release.
This meant they had to spend more cash and are now down to under $25 million. “At this time, the Company has no sources upon which it can draw for additional capital,” said Cohen.
The Roomba manufacturer has been struggling for several years in the face of increased competition from Chinese manufacturers. A sale to Amazon in 2022 looked to be its lifeline; however, regulatory scrutiny scuppered the deal, and the company was left in further turmoil. It laid off over 30 percent of its staff, lost its founder and CEO, Colin Angle, and was left with substantial debt as a result of the fallout.
This year, iRobot launched an entirely new line of robot vacuums, ostensibly to better compete with companies like Roborock, Ecovacs, and Dreame, adding lidar navigation to its line for the first time (over VSLAM). The new models look significantly different from the original Roombas and more like their competitors. They also use a different app with fewer features, but added some new hardware features the previous models lacked, including spinning mop pads and a roller mop.
In a regulatory filing earlier this month, the company warned it may be forced to seek bankruptcy protection following the breakdown of advanced negotiations with a potential buyer, and if it couldn’t secure additional funding.
Roomba customers are understandably concerned about the impact these current financial troubles might have on their home cleaning robots.
Earlier this month, fellow American robot vacuum manufacturer Neato, which shut down in 2023, pulled the plug on its cloud services, leaving its robots unable to communicate with the Neato app. However, the vacuums can still be controlled manually.
Similarly, if iRobot goes out of business and its cloud shuts down, most Roombas should still continue to work in offline mode — pressing the physical button on the robot to start, stop, and dock it. However, they likely wouldn’t be controllable via the app for features like scheduling or specific room cleaning, or via voice commands. This potential dilemma just further highlights that cloud-connected devices should be enhanced by connectivity, not reliant on it.
Customers shouldn’t need to be concerned because the company going down should not brick your PHYSICAL PRODUCTS
And yet, here we are
I bought a robot vacuum, rooted it, and installed Valetudo (Wyze WVCR200S w/motherboard from a Viomi V6 - same robot).
I don’t have to worry about this shit anymore. The vacuum still does the vacuum thing whether or not it’s connected to the internet.
Pressing a physical button to stop it. So you gotta chase your roomba down before it eats your chinchilla. Sounds fun.
This potential dilemma just further highlights that cloud-connected devices should be enhanced by connectivity, not reliant on it.
This should be everyone’s takeaway.
The problem isn’t the company possibly going out of business, its the loss of online service nerfing the device that is the real issue.
Glad we have dumb “roomba” that has just one physical sensor when he bumps into something and infra for detecting docking station and for remote control. It does the job and that’s the main thing. Over the years only had to replace the battery.
Truly the Kodak of this generation
Kodak said “we don’t believe digital photography will take over” and iRobot is like “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas”
They fucked up by making their robots last seemingly forever, due to the fact they spy on you and get stuck every 15 mins so you never want to turn them on.
The entire problem is that automobiles have become an accepted housing option, and Roombas don’t operate well in a vehicular environment, thus drastically cutting into their sale.
You can’t set a timer on the thing without internet access?!?
You can’t do shit on those roombas without a connection to the manufacturers servers.
On and off is the most you can do.
In order to make them work again once the servers are down, you need to spoof the dns to a local server that you then need to reverse engineer from the api.
If you are lucky the thing has home assistant integration because some awesome people already did exactly that or the manufacturer was kind enough to give access to the bot api
Wow, what a piece of shit. Dumb engineers.
No fucking way this was decided by an engineer instead of a manager
Dumb shit like this is never the engineer’s idea.
Maybe we can come up with a decentralized serverless way to control all these vacuums while stealing people’s data for charity?
Hey roomba! I want a second mortgage!
Hey roomba! My bank account is huge I wish a credit card company would just call me!This vacuuming is brought you by Squarespace…
This year, iRobot launched an entirely new line of robot vacuums … adding lidar navigation to its line for the first time (over VSLAM).
Reminiscent of all the other failed tech companies that refused to implement better/newer tech.
I wouldn’t get one without lidar.
Lidar is fucking awesome. My vacuum will damn near chase me out of wherever it’s cleaning 😂
It would be easy enough to force vendors to make the URL the device connects to, configurable and to publish the API the device is using. Two minuscule changes that can prolong the life of devices by decades.
That would make the husk of the company truly worthless, and I’m not sure private equity will allow that.
To be fair, many roombas have a mini DIN connector somewhere, which opens up the possibility for external control - what I plan to do when mine stops working due to server shutdown. However, getting replacement parts will get more and more tricky as time goes by.
I just had to through out a mostly functional airfryer because the drawer rail disintegrated and the replacement part is no longer manufactured. The oldest one I could get was a “new” version with more plastic and a slightly bigger size, so it didn’t fit by about 5%.
It really should be illegal, there is no logical reason for 500 slightly different models and inoperability of basic functions (drawers, APIs, …) aside from malignant greed and planet destruction.
Gods, I fucking hate this so much. I’ve got a ninja blender that the lid seal is broken, and the lid alone is like 50-70% of the cost of a whole new unit. It’s ridiculous how impossible it is to find replacement parts for simple things anymore.
Yeah, the one cloud-connected device I had in my house, my Neato D7 Botvac, was lobotomized just last week when Vorwerk switched off its servers. I’m quite pissed off. It still works if I press the button and let it roam, but I lost scheduling, cleaning maps, no-go zones… I’m MORE than quite pissed off.
I have two D5 and the app and cloud connection is working just fine!?
Can you open the website? I can’t:
I didn’t know there’s a website to login to. Always ever used the app. But yes, I can open it:
Weird, must be regional
For anyone interested in owning their vacuum robot check out Valetudo
I’ve been eyeballing this, doesn’t seem too difficult for most compatible models either. Might be a little after Christmas project
Idk, the dev seems… hostile. And prevents the project from becoming a community effort. Also:
Feature-parity is a non-goal for Valetudo, and if you’re wondering which features “you might lose”, Valetudo is not for you.
I mean, I do wonder if I will lose features, therefore I guess I should look elsewhere.
Idk, the dev seems… hostile.
I’ve only ever seen a dev become “hostile” when people simply don’t read the documentation and ask the same questions over and over and over again.
And prevents the project from becoming a community effort.
No, I am not doing that, because I cannot do that. That is the whole thing with FOSS code.
If there was a community of builders picking it up and doing something community-driven, I could not do anything about it, nor would I want to.
They would be required to not call it Valetudo + not use the logo, so that they cannot coast off the brand and reputation of course - and that I would absolutely expect from anyone -, but other than that anyone can do whatever.
Why this hasn’t happened yet, I cannot say for certain, but my hypothesis is that no one actually wants to put in the work. Likely both because work is work and work is annoying, but also because what exists now just works so what would you even do other than slap another name on it and feel good about yourself.
But putting that aside, I’d like to ask a different question: Why wouldn’t I want that?
If community is nice, friendly, warm and full of heart, why would I oppose that? I am, after all, just like you. A human that would like to have fun, pleasant and nice interactions with other like-minded humans. I, like everyone else, am a social creature that enjoys being seen as a fellow human and member of a group.
So why would I oppose that?
The answer to that might be, that the mental model of “community project” does not actually in reality and execution fit any of what I described right now.
Of course, I cannot and will not rule out that it is just me and that I am the problem, but even if that is the case, then I still need to exist and need space to exist. “Just be normal” just means “stop being you”
It would be quite weird to not allow me to exist within the space I created from nothing from the ground up, wouldn’t it? If even that isn’t a place I would be allowed to be in, then where is?
First off, thank you for all your work.
Why this hasn’t happened yet
You set the bar pretty high for improvement.
The vacuums are expensive. The work requires multiple top-tier skill sets, and the people with those skill sets don’t generally have enough time to contribute to something this heavy
Somebody could just fork you and clone everything you’re doing, but it’s not like any users would chase someone else versus you when you’re the only one getting actual work done.
It’s also kind of poking the bear for these vacuum companies skirting along by selling user data.
Thank you very much for your hard work. I would never have gotten a robot vacuum if Valetudo did not exist.
Valetudo is not a community is on the website.
If your answer to my comment is: “well, you can create your own community, with blackjack and hookers!”, well… There’d be so much to discuss that I don’t think it’s worth it.
And as for the second paragraph, communities aren’t “nice”. They’re communities, made of people, who are all flawed, just like everyone is, in different ways, but manage to make the puzzle of human interaction fit. If all you want is people communicating and behaving in a specific way that you approve of, that’s not a community.
Nobody’s forcing you out of your space and I’ve never proposed it, I just said that I won’t be using your software, we’re both making our choices, hopefully in respect of each other.
Holy crap, didn’t expect the creator of Valetudo to be here. Love your style, keep it up
🫡
It’s all explained here: https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/why-not-valetudo.html
The dev has a specific vision and that’s it. If you don’t like it you can use something else.
Just like the dev of Calibre/Kitty. He does things a certain way because that’s the way he likes it. It’s a stupid and shit way, but Calibre has no real competition so I use it 🙂
The dev has a specific vision and that’s it. If you don’t like it you can use something else.
Yes, that’s what I wrote as well.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to support anything from iRobot. I’m hoping that there will be a jailbreak made available before they go bankrupt, but I doubt it.
Absolutely love Valetudo!
