I don't know why you would say that, my Xiaomi s6's wheel motor died, I was bummed about it. I ordered a replacement motor, and to my surprise, I only had to open one or two screws and the motor module popped right out. The module had a nice slitting connector. I put the new motor back in and I was done. The thing must be at least 8 years old by now and it's still chugging along. I now passed it on to my parents and it's cleaning their house.

Agreed. I can code so I don't care whether it's vibecoded or whatever to bootstrap. Them working on designing hardware is what matters to me. I'll definitely keep an eye out for the kit, I don't have a lot of patience for hunting parts but would love to play with this.

A few thoughts on the vibe coding… This is probably just one person and this project wouldn’t have seen the light of day if they weren’t able to vibe code it. A few years ago this would have to be a kickstarter that raised at least several hundred thousand- probably millions to have a shot at successfully getting off the ground. You’re talking software and hardware engineering, experts in multiple disciplines, a whole team of people pouring in many hours to develop a product, etc.

Vibe coding doesn’t always have to result in low quality. An experienced engineer with good systems design skills piloting an agent can be incredibly productive. Although I’m pretty rusty at writing code, I’m still good at systems design and I’m having success with coding agents.

Recently, I’ve built a system for myself because what I wanted didn’t exist. There’s no way I ever would have done it without AI. I wouldn’t be able to pull it off myself even with years of time and a budget to hire developers for my personal project is nonexistent. It’s the kind of thing I never would have thought to start prior to good coding agents.

My productivity has been insane. I feel like there’s 10 of me. The quality of output is shockingly good. I’m looking at this and it’s one of the most put together systems I’ve worked on at any point in my career. It’s beyond what I saw from much more senior developers than I and it’s beyond what I was ever capable of myself.

I get why people don’t like vibe coding. It does produce a lot of slop in the hands of someone unskilled in the use of their tools. It costs people their jobs. There are a hundred reasons not to like it. The flip side is we get cool projects like this one because a single person can build the thing they always wanted and never could until now.

Why would it run Valetudo? Thats a product for rooted, closed-source vacuums.

Let alone why would someone want to attract the toxic culture that is the Valetudo creator and community?

This project seems like AI slop, but at this point that’s better than toxic dictators.