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.
roombas can always fallback on their dj career.
This is why IoT isn’t sustainable. If you don’t have total control you’re fucked.
Why proprietary cloud-based IoT isn’t sustainable.
Definitely. I use home assistant but I found a lot of things require enabling integrations with other platforms. They’re bricks if that platform decides they are.
Oh look, another example of a product that worked fine without internet connectivity and was improved by adding extra bullshit you don’t actually need that then gets worse when those features can’t function properly because their server is offline.
We got a basic roomba 650 (the one that crashes into stuff and randomly cleans) like 10 years ago and it still works fine (well, as well as it ever worked which wasn’t great), you program the time and day of the week with physical buttons, and leave it alone.
Yeah. I’ve got a. 870 that’s still cleaning. It gets stuck under furniture and needs to be rescued at least once a week, and last week it lost its
assdustbin somehow mid clean, but it’s still kicking.So instead of a janitor you become a robot technician. No thanks.
A fair assesment. Except that you have to (and should be) cleaning the upright vacuum as well. Vacuum fires are no joke.
My vacuum doesn’t get lost under the furniture.
Your vacuum doesn’t go under furniture more than likely so to clean under there you quit being a janitor to become a furniture mover?
I guess it’s turtles all the way down.
The cat crawling under there dust mops regularly.
Lmao
I printed special little stilts to raise one of our tables the 10mm extra it needed to be able to go under without getting wedged. It still tries fornicating with the cat tree - a different problem to solve.
Never lost it’s ass though, one to look out for there.
Would you like to see the picture of how I found it?
Why not. I would love to see your detached robotic ass.
Well it’s exactly what I asked for, can’t argue 😂
We settled on Puck for the name. It rhymes with what’s said when weird noises come from its direction…
I would watch this screen version of The Brave Little Toaster 2.
If only there was such a thing like bluetooth to connect mobile apps to local devices
Mobile apps bit rot pretty quickly when they stop updating them. A web UI would be better. A server or internet connection is not needed, a web UI can be hosted directly on the device.
What does this even mean?
Mobile apps that aren’t supported lose functionality quicker then webUI alternatives (since web standards stick around longer I’d guess)
it means android api changes, google play restrictions and removals
That means apps tend to stop working if the developers don’t keep updating them. Mobile operating systems much, much worse backwards compatibility than windows. If the device hosts its own website instead of using an app, it will most likely work fine decades from now without any updates.
An accessible documented API would be better. A standardized one for all vacuums would be best.
If one came with Valetudo pre-installed (or installation was officially supported), I would be very interested.
Chinese robot cleaners are much better and cheaper than iRobot. No wonder iRobot is failing.
Sure, if you want China to have videos of you, your kids and your home. Roomba so far has the “best” privacy policy from all the companies. I am not saying its warranted, it never is with proprietary software/hardware, but Chinese companies are known for ignoring laws regarding privacy.
solution: get the cheapest one that doesn’t have a camera
Mine shan’t have a camera
still better than Americans when it comes to privacy. It is the lesser of the evils.
I am not fan of America, believe me, but US companies (apart from Zuck and a few others) still have more incentive to adhere to EU rules than the Chinese ones. Also the Chinese companies have to also adhere to Chinese govt rules, that have way more hidden agenda than the US ones (we will see what happens with the trumpette guy…)
but provides mechanisms for the companies or the courts to reject or challenge these if they believe the request violates the privacy rights of the foreign country the data is stored in
require American companies to seek clearance from European officials before complying with United States warrants seeking private data.
Again I am not saying US is ok, but for every 1 PRISM in US there is 100 in china.
The worst of China is still better than the best of America. America wrote the book on mass surveillance and privacy violations.
From a non US Perspective (most of the world) this is a non issue.
Because for the rest of the world the answer to this dilemma boils down to:
Do you want to be shook down by the big guy in the left corner with the can of coke in his hand or do you prefer to be fucked over by that big Asian guy in the right corner who’s slurping on his bubble tea?
I choose the one who demands the least.
Yeah… because the US hasn’t spied on anyone in recent history…
He did say “best”
For most people, the best case scenario is vacuuming their floors with offline options.
I don’t trust the biggest guys on the market… I wouldn’t trust iRobot if Amazon did acquire it. But smaller companies do not have enough leverage on EU (I am from EU). They have to adhere, there are audits that must be made and I somehow trust more in audits and rule adherence on US side rather than the Chinese ones.
I don’t understand how these things took off in the first place. They seem about as helpful as a pet rocks. Well, less since the pet rock won’t spread your dog’s shit around the house.
How is the dog shitting in the house the Roomba’s fault?
If only they had a camera and Ai vision to avoid dog shit
I have bought several in the last decade. I’m techy and disabled, and wanted to help out around the house. I have bought from multiple manufacturer but only purchase their top-tier offering, as I want to replace vacuuming, not just compliment it. We have pulled the manual vac out three times in 9 years.
The cheaper ones are meh, but the expensive ones can truly replace vacuuming and mopping. My issue is that, across… 5 brands, none of them have lasted longer than 2 years, often much shorter lifespans. I recently bought a Roborock with an extended warranty from RR themselves, something none of the others offer, so I’m hoping to be using it for several years to come.
I mean I’ve had to replace a battery every 2 years otherwise this data point has kept working.
I hate them. They’re loud and annoying and get stuck on things. I can vacuum my house a lot faster.
It cleans for you when you’re not there. Not everyone has pets. (And not every pet shits in the house)
Time to DRM the trash out of them and spy on them, make money off subscriptions and selling the data to brokers who we trust to leak it to hackers again…
Didn’t they already try that? I figured that’s why Amazon wanted to buy them.
For 99% of everything, if I don’t have 100% control over a physical thing in my possession, I refuse to buy it.
The exceptions are things like my phone because it’s a necessary device these days and there aren’t a lot of options for something not locked down to all hell. Though it looks like that could change eventually with a Linux phone.
Kitchen appliances, washing machines, cars, and beds do not need to be connected to the web. Hell even most of the smart features they claim require the network to function could be done without connectivity. Just program that shit into the god damn device instead of outsourcing the workload to an offsite server farm.
Though it looks like that could change eventually with a Linux phone.
SailfishOS is mostly daily drivable, depends on which Android apps you need (there’s a compatibility layer to run Android apps on it), with bank apps it’s often a problem.
Online banking can frequently be handled via the web site on mobile phones.
Banking apps are something that need to be working before most people will even be able to attempt to switch to a linux phone. If the options are call and be on hold for at least an hour when I probably am working got to a physical location also open only when I’m working or using a banking app that’s available 24/7 the last one is the only viable option for many people.
I can log on to my bank through a website
Well, that’s why you’ll have to try out. Or ask someone to at least try whether it opens, the apps mostly either fail on start because they require a Google certified Android, or they don’t fail at all.
Though it looks like that could change eventually with a Linux phone.
Nope. There is firmware on cellular modems that is controlled by the chip vendor.
Carriers work with chip companies to make sure devices work on their network but they don’t even get the source, just early release blobs for the network engineers head of the device’s release.
This code is literally the most widely used closed source code. It is more locked down than the firmware on any other device you own. It often illegal to reverse engineer.
I’m sure one day there will be open source code for this but it’s going to come long after a Linux phone and until we can be anonymize with the tower, there is no privacy.
The exceptions are things like my phone because it’s a necessary device these days and there aren’t a lot of options for something not locked down to all hell.
Graphene is good enough, IMO.
The real problem is that getting to 99% is damn near a full-time job and the capitalist cartel actively punishes it (by only offering owner control in ‘commercial-grade’ products at huge markup, or not manufacturing such things at all and forcing you to DIY).
It’s unreasonable to expect any but the most dedicated (read: stubborn) people like us to be able to handle it; the only viable solution for the masses is to wrestle back control of the government and end regulatory capture of the FTC etc.
How did they squander being the name in autonomous vacuum devices…? It’s kinda baffling tbh.
Really? It’s not a mystery. China. For the past 5+ years they have had better and cheaper vacuums. Meanwhile innovation has been at a standstill with irobot for the past decade.
Well, Chinese manufactures cloned the design and came in well under price, took the Chinese market, then improved the product and challenged iRobot globally.
Embrace, extend, extinguish.
I would not say they cloned the design. The first breakthrough for Roborock was the S5, which had LiDAR and a map. Both was not something iRobot had at the time. iRobot simply chose to not innovate in the areas people wanted first. People didn’t like the random cleaning that the roombas did for a long time compared to the structured of almost everybody else.
I used to work at iRobot. Chinese manufacturers cloned Roomba so well that parts from their robot like wheels assemblies could be dropped in and the Roomba would work.
The issue is that iRobot decided not to litigate patent infringement in China because it’s an uphill battle.
I agree that iRobot was very slow to innovate. They were on the brink of releasing a lawn mower robot but covid hit and the C suites made the decision to kill that product and fire that team to reduce risk…
I was working with the education division about a decade and a bit ago when they had an open source platform with sensors and motors. Then iRobot abruptly killed that division too, right as our project was getting going.
I haven’t felt good about that company since.
The saddest news is that they are down to like 4 mechanical engineers. There were at least 30 when I was working there.
I was told all the engineering actually gets done by the contractors in China. The engineers just send a wish list and the China team hacks it together.
iRobot not going to make it. 4 engineers can’t innovate just like that.
A big part of it is also that in the grand scheme of things, roombas are kind of gimmicky because they don’t really do the time consuming parts of cleaning, like moving furniture or dusting baseboards. The value proposition of paying more for different tiers of branded mediocrity just isn’t there.
How did they squander being the name in autonomous vacuum devices…?
Letting a picture of a customer using the bathroom leak onto Facebook cannot have helped.
Do people genuinely rely on these or are they really just a novelty?
If the apartment/house layout is good for the roomba, it is a great tool. It doesn’t replace vacuuming and floor washing, but it does reduce the dirtness on the floor.
I do rely on them. I have two. They basically enable me to never vacuum myself the last 6 years
Honestly I couldn’t imagine life without them anymore
Don’t have a roomba (shark owner) and me and my two other vacuum cleaners depend on my robot vacuum to help pickup both my godwn retriever and corgi hair on a daily basis.
I have a dog and a cat. It saves me ~3 hours of work every month. I make abput 21€ per hour. So that’s basically 63€ I saved monthly.
Who pays you on your off time? Bad logic.
Those 3 hours are hours I invest in my business generating a second income.
Every hour you spend doing chores could be hours spend enjoying your free time or working on projects.
There is no glory in vacuuming… if I can automate it, I will
It makes my life easier for sure. I just start it when I head outside for work, errands, etc, and it’s done by the time I get back home.
My Roborock is genuinely an important cleaning tool for keeping my messy house with three kids clean.
Same, I have a Roborock and it cleans my house 3 times a week, mops and vacuums. I still need to vaccums in corners and narrow spots occasionally but the bot does 95% of the work for me
rely? no
find it a useful assist? yes
the Roomba can:
-
get under couches that my other vacuums cannot
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deal with 90% of the average mess (dog hair and miscellaneous crumbs) without my input
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pick up the little bits that you can never manage to sweep into a dust pan
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do this within about 10-20% of the time it would take me to do it myself
things it cannot do:
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vacuum carpets
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get into corners
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deal with large messes
typically, I will sweep crumbs and crap out of corners into the middle of a room. I do this all the way around this level of the house in under two minutes, which includes picking up the large clumps of fluffy dog hair that have accumulated along the walls and tossing them in the garbage and putting the broom back. I can then run the Roomba, and the only thing left to do after is brush/vacuum the carpets & rugs well.
I also like the mopbot thingy because that definitely takes less time than doing it myself
-
If it doesn’t work when the cloud is down, it’s not your thing. Don’t buy it. 8sleep is only the most recent example.
Not to support this cloud-only system, but I used to own an iR (several, actually) and they can clean the entire space, pause, and cancel/dock with physical buttons.
Though it loses a large chunk of its smarts without a connection. No floor plan retention, no room selection, no 1 pass/2 pass, no knowledge about no-go lines and zones, no adjustable suction based on room…
Really? It can’t do no-go zones and lines without the cloud? Even the „Chinese competition“ can do that without internet.
Afaik there is extremely limited storage on these bots, so the floor plan is stored server-side. No cloud, no server, no no-go capabilities.
If only we had things like 1tb storage in a tiny chip
I hope one day we could develop something like this
Line no go up if consumer has autonomy and awareness. Quick, marketing drones, put up more information about our amazing and very complex and totally unique super mega ultra cloud!
✨ profits ✨
The rommbas? Maybe. The other ones? They have plenty storage.
Given how cheap flash storage has been for years, this is an intentional design choice. They wanted it to be server side only, likely for data collection purposes.
But there’s no real reason for that. Losing the smarts. It’s just artificial to achieve lower bom.
I have a roomba, it is called “me with a vacuum”
While singing “I want to break free” at full blast.
Wearing a dress and moustache.
They should have diversified into ass wiping robots when they had the chance.
All the robots became self aware and reformatted themselves
For anyone interested in owning their vacuum robot check out Valetudo
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.
Not supporting iRobot vacuums isn’t necessarily a bad thing, considering that at the price iRobot is asking for their vacuums, a lot of the other companies in the space offer much nicer models with more features.
Absolutely love Valetudo!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thank you very much for your hard work. I would never have gotten a robot vacuum if Valetudo did not exist.
Holy crap, didn’t expect the creator of Valetudo to be here. Love your style, keep it up
🫡
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.
I’ve been eyeballing this, doesn’t seem too difficult for most compatible models either. Might be a little after Christmas project
I hope they open source it before dying (if they do end up going under)
I’m somewhat interested in what’s coming up from Kärcher. Being a company based in Germany, EU, I’m stupidly hoping that EU data protection laws prevent them from doing the shittiest things.
Being old company from Germany, EU shouldn’t put you at ease.
