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.

Lmao

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.

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.

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.

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?

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 🙂