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Comment by oliwarner | original | Oomwoo, an open-source robot vacuum you build yourself
[−]oliwarner · 2026-07-02 Thu 07:01 UTC · link
The hardware is an issue, not because it's bad but because it's massively expensive to buy the components piecemeal.

You can purchase a lidar vac for £70-80 now. Even if you only replaced the brains, that's a quarter of the price of a Oomwoo. The only upgrade I'd want is self-emptying. You'd probably have to relocate the charging contacts but it seems highly achievable.

Or you could break up an existing vac for the parts. You'd get the lidar, bumper, ToF, cliff sensors, motors and wheels, perhaps even some seals for your printed parts. Again, much cheaper, especially if you shop on the used market (I can get a whole working vac for the price of new wheels). All these robots use common parts so the risk of getting it wrong is very small.

My point is perhaps they could coalesce around a common white label option unit or set of parts currently sold as a vacuum.

[−]haellsigh · 2026-07-02 Thu 07:10 UTC · link
For that, there's https://valetudo.cloud/ that supports a number of models from different brands.
[−]RobotToaster · 2026-07-02 Thu 07:29 UTC · link
None are particularly easy to flash, and the dev seems to have no interest in making it more accessible.
[−]dzhiurgis · 2026-07-02 Thu 08:14 UTC · link
> £70-80

Dreame's rebranded Mova starts at something like 350 EUR. Yes it's kinda capable and yet still kinda shit - gets tangled, stuck and needs quite some TLC. It doesn't look like it's going to be very reliable either.

I can't imagine how poorly 70 one can be.

Reminds me of people buying battery stick vacs without checking and then getting disappointed it's not same as dyson (while samsung as actually leads according to project farm tests).