"It could have been worse," one owner incredibly concluded.
  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1123·
    2 months ago

    Am I the only one confused by why a vacume needs a live video feed? Who’s sitting there thinking “I want to watch what my vacume sees!”

    • MicrowavedTea@infosec.pubEnglish
      535·
      2 months ago

      A speaker too. So you can mess with your pets while away or spy on your spouse. What an amazing product idea /s

      • Cocodapuf@lemmy.worldEnglish
        34·
        2 months ago

        I mean, the speaker part makes sense. The vacuum has a speaker so it can make an alert sound of something’s wrong. The most common ones I hear are “please charge Roomba” and “error, please move Roomba” (that’ll happen if it rolls over a grate or something and the wheel gets stuck).

        But a cheap speaker is a pretty sensible feature.

        • T156@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          At minimum, it might also have it for the “turning on” noise.

          It might also just be the default beeper for the motherboard, and it’s just been reconfigured to make a particular noise instead of the usual beep.

    • PSoul•Lemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      39·
      2 months ago

      Ok so I used to work for iRobot, the OG robot vacuum maker. Robot vacuums used to vacuum randomly. To make them vacuum systematically, they need to map your house. One cheap way to do that is to use a camera roughly pointing at your ceiling and do Video SLAM. The camera identifies features on your ceiling and how they are changing to know where the robot is and map the room.

      I guess ecovac thought they could add a camera feed feature for free since they already had a camera on the robot.

      • Zacryon@feddit.orgEnglish
        13·
        2 months ago

        For the non-roboticists: SLAM = Simultaneous Localization And Mapping.

        In robot navigation problems we often face the problem to get a grasp of the environment and the robot’s position in it. It’s easier if there’s already a map provided and some sort of external observer who knows where the robot is relative to the map.

        Since people don’t usually go into your home to map it out and install some sensors in order to locate the robot, SLAM is the way to go. While moving through an environment, a map of the environment is created and by utilzing some fancy techniques based on sensor data like from cameras, mic+loudspeaker, LIDAR or whatever, it is possible to also infer the robot’s position.

        • Ironfacebuster@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          It’s both, I have the Roomba with the camera on the front and it can sometimes avoid dog poop and wires on purpose (and sometimes navigate, but it mostly seems like it navigates like the other models with no cameras by bumping into things that don’t ever move)

    • pandapoo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      32·
      2 months ago

      The problem isn’t the video feed per se, it’s that the business model of IoT companies, especially cheap IoT companies, include selling off customer data to advertising and other surveillance capital type entities.

      So, cheap hardware, lax security at best, and a business model that requires all their devices to have an internet connection to function properly, or access its full feature set.

    • GenosseFlosse@feddit.orgEnglish
      17·
      2 months ago

      Probably to map the room and avoid obstacles like Chairs and pets. Low res cameras are probably the cheapest option for hardware.

    • suburban_hillbilly@lemmy.mlEnglish
      61·
      2 months ago

      The unfortunate, actual reason is that people will pay more markup on the vacuum with useless shit added than it costs to add it. Explaining why humans are like this is unfortunately a less tidy and much more disappointing endeavour.

      • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
        17·
        2 months ago

        This is the reason I don’t get PS+.

        I see the cheapest option, and think “oh…but I don’t go online much, and thats too little value for that high price.”

        Then for a little more money you get a little more value.

        Then for a little MORE value, you get the retro games from PS1 and PS2.

        And then I realize that’s DOUBLE the cheapest option, to play games that are 20-30 years old.

        So I put 2 and 2 together, and decide this whole thing is pissing me off. Fuck it, I’ll just emulate the damn things…

        • kibiz0r@midwest.socialEnglish
          4·
          2 months ago

          So I put 2 and 2 together, and decide this whole thing is pissing me off.

          Still waters run deep.

  • hOrni@lemmy.worldEnglish
    61·
    2 months ago

    Yet when I wanted to make my vacuum speak like Consuela from Family Guy I couldn’t do it.

      • jagged_circle@feddit.nlEnglish
        25·
        2 months ago

        That whole racist bit was the reason I stopped watching Family Guy.

        Latino cleaners arent stupid. Their working conditions are terrible, and they have actual demands.

  • AmbiguousProps@lemmy.todayEnglish
    611·
    2 months ago

    although Ecovacs accounts are password-protected, and a further four-digit PIN code is required to access the video feed, that PIN code is not validated server-side—meaning anyone with the basic know-how of a tool like Chrome web inspector could bypass it

    • lad@programming.devEnglish
      9·
      2 months ago

      Reminds me of how Xiaomi password protected smart kettle was only password protected in the UI. I think, it’s an industry standard nowadays 🥲

  • nyan@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    38·
    2 months ago

    I guess he wasn’t naked at the time (camera was hijacked too, according to the article).

    And people wonder why I go out of my way to obtain equipment that doesn’t have a bloody app or connect to anything.

  • iAvicenna@lemmy.worldEnglish
    23·
    2 months ago

    imagine now somehow combining its sensor data with outputs from a LLM everyone would think that their roomba has become sentient

  • EuCaue@lemmy.mlBEnglish
    19·
    2 months ago

    I never thought I’d read about a vacuum being hacked one day.

  • Frostbeard@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    2 months ago

    How could it have been worse. A fucking basic appliance was hijacked. Ofc its not weaponized, that would have made it worse I guess

    • jagged_circle@feddit.nlEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      Did you see the one with a gun that fired any time it bumped into something?

      It could have been worse.