this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2025
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Smart Homes

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Hey guys,

I don't know if you'd count vacuum robots as smart home as well, but I guess this might be interesting: Vorwerk, owner of Neato Robotics, has closed down the cloud features for Neato Botvacs - three years earlier than they promised to.

A petition is going strong against it.

I'd be happy if you could sign and share. Even if you are not affected today, it could be a strong sign for other vendors as well...

https://www.openpetition.org/us/petition/online/vorwerk-need-to-stop-destroying-working-hardware-keep-neato-robotics-cloud-alive

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[–] Axolotl_cpp@feddit.it 12 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

Or they can patch the robot (if they can send firmware updates) to support local servers and then release the code to deploy a local server

[–] Zachariah@lemmy.world 11 points 6 days ago

It should be the law that for all abandoned devices, companies are forced to do provide root access at end of life.

[–] Ascendor@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

That is one of the demands of the petition :-)

[–] Axolotl_cpp@feddit.it 2 points 5 days ago
[–] TootSweet@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Help us Valetudo, you're our only hope.

(No idea if Valetudo supports those specific devices.)

[–] Ascendor@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 6 days ago

Unfortunately, valetudo is not compatible with Neato devices. There are other great initiatives, including integrating an ESP32 device. Nevertheless, even if we are able to revive the devices, I think a strong statement should be sent to Vorwerk (and others) that we don't accept behavior like this. So please sign and share, even if you are not directly affected this time!