Amazon terminates iRobot deal, Roomba maker to lay off 31% of staff::Amazon and iRobot said regulatory concerns made it impossible for the deal to move forward, sending the Roomba makers’ shares plummeting.
If it’s any consolation those people would have been laid off no matter what happened. That’s how we do things now apparently
iRobot said it would focus on margin improvements, reduce spending on research and development, and pause all work on “non-floorcare” products, including its air purifiers and robotic lawn mowers.
I doubt it. If you are stopping r&d and killing whole product lines, it makes sense to lay off the teams directly tied to those product lines. I’m guessing they needed Amazon to help them break into the market for areas outside of floor vacuums?
Oh, I might consider buying one again now.
Save yourself the headache and get something that works locally and doesn’t rely on their cloud and app.
True story. I hate all those cloud devices, which can run perfectly locally. And doesn’t require a subscription. I even see it back in cars nowadays, stupid subscriptions.
What options are there out of the box? I only know of hacking well known brands and use something like valetudo
I put a wemos d1 mini in mine since all I need to do is mash the existing Clean button. The internal MCU runs on 3.3v, the buttons are pulled low and activated by the same 3.3v rail, so all I had to do was flash it with ESPhome and wire the low side of the buttons to a gpio. I wanted to read the LED state but the multiplex scheme wasn’t worth decoding. I did use the single analog pin to measure battery voltage, and an input for the roller and blower motors.
Ah nice, so they work completely without internet? I somehow assumed they will need internet for first setup
I bought them used, so I don’t know about initial setup if you bought a brand new one. But yeah the shark isn’t even on my wifi, just the esphome.
Well done. I can’t tell if you’re shitposting or if this is legitimately the simplest home automation setup.
https://i.postimg.cc/BnsdHL8x/Screenshot-20240129-171247.png
https://i.postimg.cc/1tHgRNNJ/Screenshot-20240129-171945.png
I live my life like it’s a shitpost
Bro’s a menace to robot vacuum companies
Reasonably sure i can set up local control through home assistant. Haven’t looked too hard but I’ve always liked the featuresets on the roombas and the Amazon connection was the reason I haven’t done too much investigation yet.
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Looks like roborock is a favorite. I’ll have to look into them.
I’ve been much happier with my Roborock than my Roomba. It definitely seems smarter.
Huh I thought it was done a long time ago. Looks like Roomba’s back on the menu, boys!
No Amazon does not terminate the deal, the EU did. Because otherwise Amazon will have too much power over the robot industry.
And, Amazon didn’t want to give up the ‘mapping everyone’s home and tracking them’ concept.
Good news for us Roomba users, not so good news for employees. 😑
Naming your robot company iRobot is Nightmare Nexus levels of disrespect
