The app is ios only and you need to buy hepa bags every week for it. Those kind of kill it for me.

This title is dumb. Companies are not selling all of their products at a loss just to harvest your data[1] and privacy is not significantly more expensive. Don't let capitalism fool you into believing we're suffering from anything but the natural progression of "infinite growth".

We're so far into dystopia, and used to every company double/triple/quadruple dipping, that the entire concept of a company simply building a quality product, that lasts as long as possible, without ads, or extracting and selling your data, planned obsolescence, or price gouging is insanity... which is itself, batshit insane. This is not an efficient system. It's a runaway freight train of greed and narcissism that is parasitically killing our host spaceship.

[1] they might be with Alexa hubs and other select data harvesting multipliers, but they're probably selling them at cost or a tiny loss.

https://www.theverge.com/23934731/valetudo-robot-vacuum-hacking

Or you buy a cheap compatible robot and install valetudo

This is cool but it would have to be like a third that price before anyone could take the leap. If anything someone should find some way to hack and replace the spyware in a Roomba or something

I know you can't put a true price on privacy, but I can clearly state that this goes beyond reasonable pricing for me. $1800, plus $180/year in fees for bags/membership subscription. That's a $3600 + battery and parts replacement investment over 10 years, and who's to say the app/device firmware will be supported that whole time? The extended warranty is for two years. There doesn't appear to be information on repairs outside of the warranty, which requires the subscription for 2 years for the extended warranty. This sounds like a disaster of a product from an ecological standpoint.

ooooor use whatever brand and model is compatible with Home Assistant

Another solution that guarantees no data is sold is to just buy a regular corded vacuum. It may not be as convenient, but it'll save you having to worry about your vacuum stealing data. At least until they start forcing newer models to require an app.

Me speaking to my mum: Get off Facebook! They're just trying to sell you shit you don't need!

Also me: oh, I should replace my robot vac with this fancier one!

Buy a Valetudo compatible vacuum and patch it. Dreame L10 is the first one that comes to mind.

Damn that bag must be super small to only last a week. My s7 ultra dock bag lasts around 6 months. Before I started living with a cat I was still using the original bag that had been going on a year and still wasn't full, vacuuming daily.

Edit: For context, my roborock dock's bag is 3 liters, so think the volume of 1 and a half 2 liter soda bottles, and the apartment it lasted a year in was ~500 sq ft. The matic's bag needs to fit inside the robot and looks to be close to the size of the palm of your hand. You can see it at 0:37 in the video on their site.

Some/Many robot vacuums can be flashed with custom firmware and then only communicate locally.
Unfortunately it seems the software isnt as polished or well as cleaning, but i guess some less efficient cleaning vs phone-home crap is a good counter.

Or just buy one with a remote or a manual one. It does not and should not require an app to function

I'm think I'm okay with using my bagless, cordless, replaceable battery, dumb vaccuum.

Anyone have experience with roborock s7 ultra with valetudo or simmilar?