SgtSuckaFree

If the motherboard has any available pcie slots (and the chassis has space for it), minimal graphics cards with HDMI or VGA or whatever else can be had for really cheap. That’s what I use to troubleshoot my truenas box.

I second this, Valetudo is rock solid. Also the map it creates in HA is more or less live.

Glad to see I’m not the only one doing this. It definitely leads to a lot of small talk about my email domain, but I’ve never run into a situation yet where I couldn’t sign up for something. My personal favorite is when reluctantly providing an email for something I don’t care about I can spout out something like “blockthishottrash@mydomain.tld”. That’s lead to some fun reactions.

I run Home Assistant in Kubernetes. I also use helm, which significantly reduces the amount of config yaml that’s necessary for k8s, so it’s pretty manageable.

That’s a good point about the firmware. Just as a data point, I purchased mine about 3 weeks ago from Amazon (the seller was Dreametech themselves) and was able to root it. I think the smart move is to try and root it before you even think about connecting it to a network, as connecting will prompt a firmware update check. I obviously can’t speak to the W10, but Amazon at least has a pretty lax return policy, so if you can’t root it you can always return it.

Also, to add some detail to OP’s actual request about my experience rooting:

• Purchased vacuum here
• Purchased this usb serial module
• Purchased this pack of cable because I needed male-to-female connectors. I didn’t mind that there were a bunch of them, I tinker with ESP so they’ll get used.

The technical issue I ran into was the opening of the serial connection to the robot (from here). It turned out I needed to switch the RX and TX connectors around and run as root to make the initial connection. YMMV, but I don’t believe there’s any risk of damage by trying different combinations. On the L10, you have 2 options for Ground as well. Took a bit of fiddling to get that worked out.

Aside from that speed bump, the process of actually getting the firmware onto the robot is kind of a clumsy fetch quest. You have to go to another site, choose some options, and download the firmware. That site adds your job to a queue, then sends you a link an email, which could take a while if their server is busy. Just something to note, maybe do that step first and start working on the actual rooting after. You also have to download a lightweight web server app to actually transfer the files over to the robot, then use the usb serial connection to install.

I don’t mention this to scare you off trying it, it’s definitely do-able, but it’s not a straight-forward process and will almost certainly not go perfectly smoothly (the chance of encountering some minor issue(s) along the way is high). I just noticed we’re in the homeassistant channel(sublemmy?) here, so I assume you’re not afraid of getting your hands at least a little bit dirty. I will say that after getting Valetudo installed, I’ve not had any other issues with it. Solid as a rock, and has opened some really great automation opportunities in HA. I’ve also updated Valetudo from the robot itself once, and that was a pretty painless and trouble-free experience.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

Hey, I just recently did this with a Dreame L10 Pro, which I think has a similar root procedure. If you’re reasonably technical and have some Linux experience, it’s a fairly straight forward process. The documentation on the Valetudo site is decent, but doesn’t really address any possible issues you might run into during the process. All told, it took about 20 minutes, but it was a bit of a labyrinth. Having said all that, the end result is absolutely worth it, and Valetudo is pretty great.