We built a camera only robot vacuum for less than $300 (well almost)
Building and deploying navigation algorithms on a home robot vacuum cleaner
We built a camera only robot vacuum for less than $300 (well almost) launched on April 6, 2026 with 109 votes, #366 of 21,248 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches.
In plain words
This is a robot vacuum equipped with a camera, priced under $300. It is designed for people seeking an affordable robotic cleaning solution with visual monitoring capabilities. The product stands out by combining camera functionality with budget-friendly pricing, making it accessible to consumers who want both cleaning automation and the ability to observe their home remotely.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Bruce and I moved in together and were discussing buying a robot vacuum, but then decided to build one instead! Some design principles: Software Since we dont have any compute on the robot to do inference we decided to stream image frames from the robot to a laptop and then run inference on the robot and return result back to the robot for navigation. We teleoperated the robot around the house to collect tuples of image frame and a discrete navigation action. Our discrete navigation action set was: COMMANDS = { keyboard . Key . up : " FORWARD \n " , keyboard . Key . down : " REVERSE \n " , keyboard . Key . left : " TURN_CCW \n " , keyboard . Key . right : " TURN_CW \n " , keyboard . Key .…from indraneelpatil.github.io
Does a similar job
all alternatives →
We made a small and cheap network switch2024 · docs.murexrobotics.com · ▲666Hello, we're Max and Byran from MUREX Robotics, a high school robotics team from Exeter, New Hampshire. We are super proud to have made this open source piece of technology! It is only 6.9 dollars (actually!) from JLCPCB :) I hope you like it. You can find us at [email protected] and [email protected] as well if you have any questions. We will be putting a small run of these boards for sale somewhere (we have <25 units of stock), probably for $10+shipping. Let us know if you're interested in more! Board files for everything we make is here:…
- OROK-Robot: open, modular home robot framework for pick-and-drop anywhere2024 · ok-robot.github.io · ▲542
Hi all, excited to share our latest work, OK-Robot, which is an open and modular framework to perform navigation and manipulation with a robot assistant in practically any homes without having to teach the robot anything new! You can simply unbox the target robot, install OK-Robot, give it a "scan" (think a 60 second iPhone video), and start asking the robot to move arbitrary things from A to B. We already tested it out in 10 home environments in New York city, and one environment each in Pittsburgh and Fremont. We based everything off of the current best machine learning models, and so…
More life & fun this month
the category →
A free city-building game in your browser. You are the mayor. You know what the city needs. Now get it past the zoning board, the neighbors, the appeals court and the next election.
Life & fun · 3d ago · permit.petercai.com
- IV
Life & fun · 15d ago · tanzaniaeducationproject.org
Turn a phone, tablet or TV into a sign. Type a message and it fills the screen: welcome signs, timers, Wi-Fi passwords and more. No app, no account, free.
Life & fun · 16d ago · bigwords.page
Play a free virtual guitar online with your keyboard or by touch. Slow songs down and see every chord, string and strum. Acoustic, classic, electric and bass.
Life & fun · 10d ago · guitoro.com
Carrier settings from iPhone, Pixel and Galaxy firmware, decoded and compared: APNs, VoLTE, 5G and Wi-Fi Calling per carrier, and what each build changed.
Life & fun · 14d ago · carrierexplode.com
Life & fun · 24d ago · space.bl2.net
Source: Show HN post ↗
Launched alongside, April 2026
the whole month →
- AG
Thought the resources for GPU arch were lacking, so here we are
Life & fun · Apr 2026 · jaso1024.com
Built a ~9M param LLM from scratch to understand how they actually work. Vanilla transformer, 60K synthetic conversations, ~130 lines of PyTorch. Trains in 5 min on a free Colab T4. The fish thinks the meaning of life is food. Fork it and swap the personality for your own character.
AI · Apr 2026 · github.com
I made a laptop stand out of solid concrete, in the style of brutalist architecture, with themes of urbex and urban decay
Life & fun · Apr 2026 · sam-burns.com
With social media and now AI, its important to keep the indie web alive. There are many people who write frequently. Blogosphere tries to highlight them by fetching the recent posts from personal blogs across many categories. There are two versions: Minimal (HN-inspired, fast, static): https://text.blogosphere.app/ Non-minimal: https://blogosphere.app/ If you don't find your blog (or your favorite ones), please add them. I will review and approve it.
AI · Apr 2026 · text.blogosphere.app