I was all set to get started on my robot hack... but I should probably make sure the battery is fully charged first.

I hate waiting.

How it's going:

I am root.

(Got root SSH access, working on installing the hacked firmware and then loading Valetudo now.)

Robot: Valetudo'd ✅

Now for the *really* hard part - putting the thing back together! 🤞

Pippin says my work passes inspection.

But does it work??

It does! And it even preserved my existing map and other settings.

My robot is now disconnected from the cloud, and running a local web server to provide management and control of the robot.

And, me being me, of course I loaded Tailscale on the robot so I can easily access it remotely.

Now I just need to get this hooked in to Home Assistant...

Oh and I did get it connected to Home Assistant 🎉

@john_b

Pretty neat. So, it's just got a USB port inside?

@mcfate Yeah it's got a micro-USB port which is actually fairly accessible from the top of the board (would have taken ~2 minutes to get to it), but had to also short a test point on the bottom side of the board to put it into firmware download mode. Getting at that test point required the complete disassembly.

@john_b

Well, for better or worse, I didn't buy our robot vacuum. People will put up with a lot, but I suspect they'd draw the line at my disassembling it "for SCIENCE!"

I guess you're back to square one when it comes to maps and presents and all, hm?

@mcfate I was fully expecting to be back to square one, but it looks like it actually preserved my map and configurations.

It's basically just running a rooted version of the stock firmware which cuts off its connection to The Cloud, and it's running a local web server that lets you manage it directly.

I'm really impressed with this hack!