Valetudo is a cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabling local-only operation. It is not a custom firmware.
Here's a diagram illustrating the core operation principle:
You can think of it as a (quoting a user) "brain parasite" for the vendor firmware.
This comes with pro's and con's, with the main pro being that we get to benefit from the hundreds of thousands of hours of R&D the vendors put into their firmwares, but without the cloud and account requirements.
As such, it protects your data through not sharing it with anyone by being fully local, saves you from in-app ads, upselling, sudden subscriptions and all the other fun enshittification tactics and playbooks.
Valetudo aims to be a generic abstraction, providing a responsive webinterface that allows control of the robot. It can be used on phones, tablets as well as your desktop computer.
To integrate with other systems, it provides a REST-interface with inbuilt Swagger UI as documentation. Additionally, it integrates with Home Assistant and other smarthome systems using MQTT.
Being a generic abstraction, Valetudo won't be a "feature-complete" reimplementation of the vendor apps, as that would also mean inheriting all of their technical debt. It does however support everything you need to have a proper, modern, cloud-free robot vacuum.
While being published under the Apache-2.0 license and clearly being FOSS, the governance and development model Valetudo operates under is to be understood as that of "Freeware with source available". It is evidently much more than that when it comes to the freedoms provided by true FOSS, but it is not the FOSS that only knows "community-driven" you might be used to from corporate co-option and come to expect when you read "FOSS".
For more information, check out the newcomer guide, the getting started guide and also the docs in general at https://valetudo.cloud
There, you will find a list of supported robots.
This project is the hobby of some random guy on the internet. There is no intent to commercialize it, grow it or expand the target audience of it. In fact, there is intent to explicitly not do that.
Think of Valetudo as a privately-owned public garden. You can visit it any time for free and enjoy it. You can spend time there, and you can bring an infinite amount of friends with you to enjoy it. You can walk the pathways built there. You can sit on some patch of grass and maybe watch a Duck or something. You can leave a tip in the tip jar at the entrance if you really enjoy it and want to support it flourish.
You can take inspiration from it and bring that home to your own garden, giving it a personal twist and adapting it as needed. You can even make friendly suggestions if you have a really good idea that ties into the vision that is already there.
But, at the end of the day, you must understand that it is still privately-owned. You're on someone else's property over which you have no power at all. You will have to show the necessary respect. And - most importantly - you need to understand that letting you into this garden is a gift and should be treated as such.
If you don't like this garden because you don't like how it's structured, or you feel like it's missing something, or maybe I choose the wrong flowers to plant over there that's fine. It's just not for you then. You can leave at any time.
There is simply no ground to stand on to demand change to the garden. It doesn't matter if it would attract more people
or if all the other gardens in town are doing something in a specific way. It doesn't matter if your idea of what gardens
even are differs.
This at the end of the day is simply private property with free public access as a gift to everyone.
When it comes to software development, everyone has access to infinite plots of undeveloped land that they can claim at any time. Therefore, a garden being build with a specific vision does not take away the ability for anyone else to build their own garden with a different vision.
Any other mediums such as IRC, Matrix or Reddit are unofficial channels not connected to the project and might contain incorrect or outdated information.
Make sure to familiarize yourself with the ./CONTRIBUTING.md
