Troubled robot vacuum-cleaner maker iRobot, abandoned by Amazon after regulators effectively doomed the web giant’s takeover offer, has warned investors it may not survive the next 12 months.
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Another company squandering their patents and market advantage. Reminds me of TiVo.
This. I know someone who used to work there. They wouldn’t enforce the patents in China to the point where you could drop in Roomba subassemblies in competitor robots and they would still work…
I love my TiVo. I had to find someone to repair my current unit because it’s an antenna version. They don’t have/make new antenna versions.
TiVo had such an excellent UI. DVRs became common, but all the ones I saw had such inferior interfaces. Such a shame.
I bought and hacked a TiVo unit and used it for years in a place where the service wasn’t available. I miss that thing.
The movie wasn’t very good either
Once they are cut off from the parent company they will go rogue and attack in the night…
And clean up the crime scene…
You saw nothing
When I got my first robot vacuum I was too impatient to wait for the battery to fully charge before trying it out so when I started it up it was only able to clean a small area before it had to go back to charge. Very exciting though!
Anyway I went to bed not realizing that once it was fully charged it would resume cleaning. So approximately 1am the vacuum wakes back up and starts cleaning. In my sleep-addled delirious state I had absolutely no idea what the fuck was going on. Suddenly it sounded like there was a jet engine in my room and I couldn’t even tell where it was coming from until I jumped out of bed and there were red lights coming at me.
Saw my life flash before my eyes. Little fucker might as well have been a terminator.
Oof, as an American company the rest of the world is boycotting them too.
Yup, they are toast. I dont think the Americans have realized how much permanent damage Trump has caused.
I highly doubt his voters will ever realize it. People who voted for him have single digit IQs. Other Americans warned them before hand.
They’re about to learn about the world stage
Democrats have known from the moment he was elected. Republicans are starting to figure it out now that they are feeling the effects. Of course, they were the ones who caused it so…
They’re really not though, maga fascists, actually believe this is a mere speed bump on the way to the promised land…
Economists will literally say anything to perpetuate capitalism/the status quo.
All the economists here (Canada) are saying this is an absolute disaster that will cause a recession. No reasonable person believes these tariffs are a net positive.
Yeah but will they still believe that in 4 years? The problem for the republicans now is that they are getting called out by their own voters right now and it’s only March of the year 1.
So now they have to tread the fine line of not being too supportive of his policies so that they stand re-election chances while at the same time not being so against the policies as to risk Trump’s revenge. It’s a very shitty bed they have to lie in, and I almost feel sorry for them, but they deliberately shit in it themselves, so sod them.
“Many economists are saying that the market was due for a correction…”
I’ve seen that comment a few times in the last few days. They’ll say ANYTHING to support Dear Leader.
Not only boycotts, it’ll also be a prime target for retaliatory tariffs. So for even those that don’t care about the boycott, a Roomba will cost at least 25% more than the equivalent robot vacuum made in Korea.
Their products require their app, would this effectively turn their devices useless when the servers die?
I know it supports a single button to start cleaning, but I wonder if that will work properly without being able to call home.
Might be time for people to look for alternatives.
Works fine without the app.
Not if you want to schedule, edit the map, customize routines, etc
It’s still usable, it just reverts to the old school Roombas. Press clean to vacuum. Press dock to return to charger.
You can root a lot of the earlier ones.
The alternatives are Chinese, or vacuum your own floors… Nobody wants to do that
I’ve got a Samsung that works just fine completely offline with no app. I don’t need some app to block it from going somewhere I just put some things in the way. Takes 3 minutes to prep for it driving around.
It technically still works without the app but it loses features that increase the efficiency of the map, tells it where not to clean, scheduled cleaning, etc.
So basically anything that makes it more useful than just doing it yourself.
Everything that makes it better than a generic copy, yes
That’s why I only bought the basic model – didn’t want a cloud company to have a map of my house lying around
Requires an app? As soon as Amazon bought it, mine has never again connected to an app or the internet.
It usually has a big start button on it’
I assume this will brick all Roombas past the 800 series. All the scheduling, advanced mapping features etc are hosted on AWS. You’ll be able to press clean to start but that’s pretty much it… That’s unless they open up their software which they probably won’t
If it bricks my i7 room a I’ll just take it apart and make it work somehow. It will take a long time but worst case scenario it goes from a brick to a brick
Something happened when they moved to the vslam (i.e camera mapping) robots which made the software much harder to hack… you used to be able to use a serial cable to program them.
They used to encourage people to use a serial cable to program them. I remember when I got my Roomba nearly ten years ago, it came with a little pamphlet advertising their educational platform robot, which was basically a Roomba without the vacuum cleaning stuff. I think they intended it to be sort of the next step up from LEGO Mindstorm or something. But at the bottom of that pamphlet, there was a paragraph that basically said “hey you can get this educational robot, buuuut, the one you just bought has the exact same connections, firmware, and hardware 👀👀👀”
Pretty much inevitable. Nowadays there are so many robot vacuum cleaners from different brands, and everyone has more or less figured out the tech so they all work pretty well. (I have a Roborock, and have nothing to say about it other than it keeps the floors clean and doesn’t cause me any grief.) There’s no moat, so consumer market success is purely a matter of manufacturing and cost efficiency, and iRobot obviously would have a huge upfill fight against Samsung, Xiaomi, and a thousand other light consumer goods makers.
I bought a roborock Q Revo the other week, and it works great at vacuuming and mopping.
I changed its spoken language to Chinese though, to remind me who I’m living with.
I thought this was a funny gag, until I changed my router and wifi, and then had to update the robots wifi connection with all the voice prompts in chinese
i bought a roomba 2 years ago. It wasnt the cheapest, but it was the only company that isnt some cheap, chinese knockoff brand. American designed and operated still had some advantages for me at the time.
This was before USA plunged into facism though. Now i’m not sure what i would buy.
Not trying to make this sound like nyah, nyah or anything…
But here’s where I’m glad I never got into that genre of “robotic” assistants. Happy to clean my floors by hand, thank you.
Wonder what kind of illumination this situation might be shining on the current “AI assistant” craze…?? 🤷♂️ 🤷♂️
I’ve got pets and just having the hair off the floors on a regular basis without having to spend 20 min a day hauling a vacuum around strikes me as being a nice labor savings. But I haven’t sprung for one yet.
Have dog, considered same.
But, I live alone and don’t bother to vacuum everyday.
Haven’t yet found the cost/benefit to be worth it. 🤷♂️
If cost is the main issue, you can find a refurbished slightly older Eufy model on Amazon for $80, which I would consider well worth it. I have two dogs and I pull a large handful of hair out of my robo-vac every day.
My robo cleaner is just not connected to the internet… No app, no one can kill it remotely…
IMO, this thing was one of my best investments ever. Saved me days of time…
Do you beat your clothes on a rock down by the river too?
I rarely use mine, but can I block them from using the Internet and they’ll still work?
Haha. Ofc with these prices and features compared to some other good Chinese and other brands roomba is doomed. Like check vacuum wars on YT. Middle model roombas are on par with your typical Chinese brand robots but price is double. Basically, you pay for a brand 🤷.
Why are the Chinese companies not collapsing too? What’s different about irobot that they can’t compete?
Competitive market. Chinese brands have lower cost of production and sell their vacuums cheaper. They also took the lead with new features.
Is that a serious question? If it was, then Labor costs is the short answer. The longer answer would also include unmatched economies of scale at every step in the supply chain leading up to the final manufactured product as well. So their cheap labor also gets them cheap components.
Hmm, can irobot not also manufacture their products in China?
Doesn’t matter if it’s proprietary and they price the cost at a high amount
And then they go and remotely kill the vacuum after just 5 years… (See above)… Yeah, not crying for iRobot…
I will check them out later! I’ve been wanting a robot vacuum for a while now but I also am wary of Chinese bullshit.
I want a really good one that doesn’t connect to the internet in any way. 👍🏻 Even if that kills some of its smart features.
Chinese stuff has largely reached the same tipping point Japanese/Korean stuff reached in the 80s, where the previous couple decades it was cheap crap and “all of a sudden” it’s on par or better than domestic consumer tech.
The cheap junk is still cheap junk of course but if you look at the middle tier or better they can be very good. DJI is a prime example, there aren’t a lot of alternative drones if you want it to ‘just work’ and work well with decent support. You can also get a drone on Ali-express/TEMU for $20 but it’s going to be cheap crap, but DJI drones you can buy in BestBuy and the bigger/more professional ones get used on movie sets.
Yeah, that mindset was steep in a little bit of truth and a little bit of racism. China couldn’t stay behind the United States for eternity, that’s not how the flow of time works and they’re making all of our stuff so they know how to make it better.
Nah it’s not about the quality, it’s about the Chinese Communist Party & some of the sketchy-ass companies they just allow to operate over there. When I was on Reddit I had a comment I could point to with some examples. But I care, deeply, about this issue & I think it’s important to not only highlight claims but bring the receipts to back it up. So please…enjoy.
Might add to this/refine later. There’s nothing racist about this, this is merely a fraction of many, many shady business scandals I can recall off the top of my head. Things that people did, and were allowed to be shipped out to the public, they do not care. I implore you to exercise caution when trying out new electronics of any kind from China (AKA virtually all electronics), and not to knowingly purchase & consume their food.
Chinese companies sold toxic drywall to the United States, which was installed in homes & offgassed fumes. If you ask me, you’ve got to be pretty stupid to buy Chinese drywall, why would you do that? To save $5? But I digress…
It is disturbingly common for Chinese footwear, especially footwear designed for babies/toddlers/children, to contain high levels of lead. This shipment contained Chinese footwear with 300 ppm lead; that is 3x the maximum lead exposure level acceptable by law. Lead exposure, poisoning is mainly through eating or breathing, however, kids put on or take off their shoes…hands go in mouth. Or hell some kids are putting their mouths on shoes. That’s lead exposure. And as everyone is quick to point out, these are small & growing bodies, not adults. So while “they’ll live”, there really is no safe level of lead exposure for children.
Moving on from freaky footwear, there’s the 2008 Chinese milk scandal. They were intentionally sneaking melamine into milk to fraudulently boost protein levels. Melamine, a plastic used in the production of whiteboards & countertops, doesn’t even mix into milk naturally. That took effort, dissolving with formaldehyde or another chemical before they could poison your milk. Drinking this milk resulted in kidney stone production, kidney failure, etc…thousands of hospitalizations & 6 dead babies. Thankfully, the CCP harshly came down on the baddies. 2 executions, three life imprisonments, two 15-year prison sentences, and the firing or forced resignation of seven local government officials and the Director of AQSIQ. The former chairwoman of China’s Sanlu dairy was sentenced to life in prison. Also, a Chinese company poisoned pets via melamine “enhanced” wheat gluten, used in wet pet food.
Nefarious fuckery aside, I just would not eat food imported from China, as there’s a good chance it is contaminated with heavy metals. More recently than that 2014 article, I’ve heard from multiple sources that Chinese garlic is fertilized with human sewage, then bleached when it’s time to sell it in the US. Now utilizing sewage as fertilizer in agriculture, as a concept…doesn’t scare me. But do I trust the standards of the people applying it? Yeah, again, hard pass. And the bleaching, probably not bad. Bleach is food safe when it dries. But do I trust them to do it, safely & effectively? No. It is ironic, I see people defending the practices when China does it, but those same practices are probably not allowed for US produce. Little hypocritical.
They poisoned our youth & poor with cheap THC vape juice carts, using Vitamin E acetate as a binder. It works well as a binder, but when introduced into the lungs, the sticky oil coats the lungs & interferes with the function of the alveoli, resulting in a fascinating condition I can only call…“dry drowning”. You’re not in the water, you breathe in the air, but your lungs can’t process the air for oxygen & you die. Having vaping friends, I specifically recall China being blamed for the practice of Vitamin E binder oils. They did it because it was cheaper to produce. Most of the people that died were poor or high school kids, trying to get product for cheap.
Moving away from food & into hard consumer goods, can’t forget about the hoverboards. Just Google “Charging hoverboard burns house down” & you’ll get a lot of stories, even a few deaths.
Anything with a battery, really, is a risk. We know this. But depending on the manufacturer, subsequent testing, and I would also argue charging methods…we can reduce the risk as much as possible, or the manufacturer can increase our risks by cutting corners to save money.
TL;DR – China Is Asshole
Anti-China-Goods rant aside, I would also contest your claim they’re coming up on the US. Growing up I was told this, and halfway believed it, but the evidence for a prosperous China just isn’t there & the evidence against them is growing every day. Despite their numerous attempts to hide negative press. While still technically a formidable foe with power based on sheer numbers & basic technologies alone, China is a struggling world power riddled with problems, like a body with cancer. Effectively making them a paper tiger.
First & foremost, know this: China’s worst enemy has, and always will be, China. The CCP rules with an iron fist, then there are unintended consequences. The one child policy (and people’s preference to have their one child be a boy) created a terrible gender imbalance & consequences we see playing out today. As of 2021 & reacting to slowing birthrates and an aging population, the CCP now allows families to have up to 3 children. More on that in a bit…
Look into the Four Evils campaign, a movement that led to famine, the starvation of an estimated 20-30M people. It’s a fascinating little read & a perfect example of going to extremes, and unintended consequences.
Some of China’s GDP & “growth”, kind of like the US, is fake. They’ve built entire cities nobody lives in, empty malls with no stores. It looks good on paper, all that construction & work being done. But how good is that work? And what’s it all for, sitting empty, rusting/rotting/crumbling away into nothing? They, too, have a real estate bubble ready to burst.
Fake accomplishments & claims abound. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. They claim nuclear fusion. They claim they can turn deserts into lush, healthy forests. They claim amazing technologies & weapons, no you can’t see them, but trust me bro our scientists have totally verified it multiple times. So legit. 🙄🙄🙄
Much like the US & UK, but on crack – they’re using all this technology to enshittify the lives of their residents. To press that boot of authoritarian rule more firmly onto their necks, controlling every aspect of their lives, cracking down on dissent, etc. Social credit scores like a Black Mirror episode (specifically S3E1, “Nosedive”, a good watch!). The crazy COVID crackdowns, which led to…
The disenchantment of the youths, millennials & Gen Z. Granted this has been festering for years before covid, but all the weird social shit around covid led to the Tang Ping movement in China, informally known as “Let It Rot”. An overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated youth slaving away for the CCP, facing an aging population to care for, has decided to just let it all rot. Juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Why try to date, why marry, why have any children at all, let alone 3? What’s the point of it all, to help the CCP? The assholes…running & ruining their lives? Nah. Let it rot. Very fascinating stuff, Google it.
So between their copy-paste or outright fake “innovations”, their fake real estate & holdings, their poisoned food, their poor, impoverished populations, their aging population, their despondent & depressed youth, etc…I don’t think things are looking so hot for China. The more you learn, the more the narrative unravels. It’s pretty sad that they have so many people & don’t dominate the world, but again, it’s mostly China’s fault. Even their own citizens resent China, with damn good reason. Ultimately, their actions (and inaction) will not allow China to succeed.
I have an older model roomba, the 630 that has no internet connection whatsoever.
I pulled a trigger in 2024 for their 2023 pick. Dreame l20 ultra. It has app and does connect to the net. My pihole doesn’t necessary send tons of requests outside. Just occasionally and most of them is when I visit app.
If you want truly self hosted vacuum, check out valetudo and their list of supported vacs. This way you would retain most of not all features and it will be fully your own device.
I’m glad my old, non-smart one still works fine. It slams into things and says, “Roomba needs help” or something when it eats a sock or wire I missed. But at least it will outlast the company’s servers.
(I know I didn’t contribute shit & just complain but) … isn’t it a bit weird how after all this time there arent any good open sauce diy robot kits?
Like, materials, sensors, brushes, filters, batteries, etc are all cheaply available, a basic board could literally be just cut plywood with the rest is the things mounted on top (who even needs a cover?). And ofc one could mount various weapons mod on it.
Popular Science had an “open source” robot lawnmower plans in the…80s? I have it somewhere. Old enough that it used deep cycle lead-acid batteries and spinning round dremel blades. No laser to cut the grass, although it did use LEDs for sensors for grass height.
Go ahead and make one then. Nobody is stopping you from being the first.
… I’m that, my best is what is stopping me :(.
What about LEGO Mindstorms? Does that count?
I mean, I don’t demand an open source washing machine or dryer either.
yes but they don’t need a cloud service, neither scanning your home to function
Ok, but that would be amazing.
Imagine the ability to actually define your own cycles.
Tho how most are built, that shouldn’t be that hard with a little arduino.
I love DIY tech projects and yet I would never go through the effort to make a robot vacuum because vacuuming is already the easiest chore in the house. You kinda just stand there and go swoop swoop swoop a few times. Takes like 3 minutes to do an entire room. As opposed to listening to the robot vacuum rumble around for an hour and do a half ass job, if it even finishes without getting spooked by a shadow thinking it’s a 100ft cliff
Got a good deal on a Roomba, I have a shark with HEPA filter and all, very good vacuum. I can vacuum, then let the Roomba run, and it still finds shit. I like it, especially for pet hair. Only thing I don’t like is it’s random pattern, mine doesn’t map the room, refuse to get one with a camera.
Sounds like you don’t have a thick furred dog that sheds multiple coats throughout the year.
We got a roomba as a gift and it has saved so much effort of sweeping/vacuuming the excess of fur on the floors.
Love my husky but damn…
Yeah, people complain about roombas not giving a super deep clean… But they’re really not intended to do so. They’re meant to be a daily maintenance clean. They may not be great for when you dump an entire can of coffee grounds in your carpet… But they’re wonderful when you have a big dog with lots of fur that needs to be vacuumed every single day.
Better to put my efforts toward automating the flipping of light switches and the raising/lowering of window shades
I really don’t like vacuuming, so to me it doesn’t matter how long it takes; I can set it up and then leave the house
Yes, we all need to manage our lives & our shortcomings.
I like vacuum cleaning chore too, but can have periods when my brainhole just won’t register the todo.
Didn’t iRobot put out a DIY robot/vacuum that you could assemble how you wanted?
Yeah, but it didn’t have a vacuum. It was just a development thing.
It was an awesome rover robot for tinkering and introducing kids to technology! Wish there were more versions of hardware like that.
True, I guess my comment did sound a bit “not interesting” 😅
I think it’s a great development kit. I wish my Eufy robot vacuum had that level of tinker-ability. It’s already got googly eyes…
There is https://valetudo.cloud/ for a lot of existing models, it’s about the closest thing we have.
“for a lot of models” is a bit of an exaggeration. Especially as Xiaomi/Dreame try to actively restrict Valetudo use.
But yes, Valetudo is a great project. I’d just wish there was a manufacturer who would openly endorse it.
I’ve wondered before how large an order would be required to entice a white label manufacturer of robot vacuums into doing a production run of units with Valetudo preinstalled.
I would absolutely buy one if someone could work out a fair business arrangement with the developer and throw the project up on kickstarter.
There are not enough smart-vacuum owners in the world that would make it more profitable to just make the hardware without hoovering up the data that comes with its use.
Oh fuck,
I’m gonnaI might test this.
I’ve never heard of it before, but the more I read the more I like it.Thx!
I have it on a Roborock S5 and it works great, so much more stable than the original firmware that requires an internet connection.
Certain models can be harder to root though, so read through the description and guide thoroughly first.
I have an S5 Max, its a long time I think about switching… but I dunno if its worth it
Yeah if it’s working fine now I wouldn’t bother.
Will certainly be a bummer if they do go under, I really appreciated their serviceability. Have several in the immediate family that have been going for over 7 years at this point though all kinds of calamities. Each time can I just pop out all the components clean/replace as necessary and get it back in service, good as new.
Agree. While I think there’s been little effort to evolve their products at the same pace as their competitors, I have very much appreciated their servicability.
If it doesn’t work, hit it with a hammer.
If it then breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
Their products are like 5 years behind their competitors. It’s inevitable.
Tried several of those vacuums but none really worked that well
Have you tried Roborock? It’s an amazing vacuum and connects very well inside Home Assistant.
Also easy to repair. I got one that’s like 8 years old and I replaced the blower and a sensor and its super easy and the components are cheap.
Not only that, they post the wiring diagrams online and even have a video tear downs.
Here is an example.
Nah I got kids they will kill it on no time
I do too. I just run it when they are in school. I keep the vacuum in my coat closet and open the door when I’m about to run it.
We need decent European alternatives for robot vaccuums.
We need open source alternatives
I’ll just put this right here…
Valetudo, though an absolutely amazing software, is no the replacement I was meaning. I meant we need a fully open source robot, from software to hardware, and that can be adapted. Of course there’s always blobs which are not open source, but that’s the case already for many things
Absolutely, but that only happens once someone starts a project and gets contributors. Be the change you want to see.
