Building and Modifying Valetudo

These are instructions for quickly setting up an environment where you can build and modify Valetudo according to your needs.

It shows a complete setup from scratch, on a freshly installed Ubuntu 18.04 system.

Your mileage may vary if you’re using a different OS, or if you start from a different setup. However, it should be rather easy to understand the steps, and to adapt them to your situation.

1. Install prerequisites

Install git and npm:

sudo apt install git npm

2. Clone the repository

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/Hypfer/Valetudo.git

3. Install dependencies

cd Valetudo
npm install

4. Create default configuration by running valetudo

npm run start
CTRL + C

On first launch, Valetudo will generate a default config file at the location set in the VALETUDO_CONFIG_PATH environment variable and automatically shut down, because it won’t be able to autodetect the robot it is running on.

Something like VALETUDO_CONFIG_PATH=./local/valetudo_config.json should work fine.

Therefore, you need to edit the newly created file in order to be able to talk with your robot from your dev host:

{
  "embedded": false,
  "robot": {
    "implementation": "RoborockS5ValetudoRobot",
    "implementationSpecificConfig": {
      "ip": "192.168.xxx.xxx",
      "deviceId": 12345678,
      "cloudSecret": "aBcdEfgh",
      "localSecret": "123456788989074560w34aaffasf"
    }
  }
}

Setting embedded to false disables all functionality that assumes that Valetudo runs on the robot such as some file-system related things.

The config key robot specifies the ValetudoRobot implementation Valetudo should use as well as some implementation-specific configuration parameters. When running on the robot itself, these are usually detected automatically.

For roborock robots, deviceId and cloudSecret can be found in the /mnt/default/device.conf as did and key on the robot. Since both values are static, you’ll only need to do that once.

The localSecret can be found in the robots FS as well: /mnt/data/miio/device.token. Note that this one might change when you’re switching wireless networks etc.

It’s possible to specify both secrets as either hex or a regular string.

Once you finished editing the configuration, you should be all set.

Please note that Valetudo will replace the configuration with a default one if it fails to parse it correctly.

5. Verify configuration and run

npm run start

If your configuration is correct, Valetudo should now be working on your development host.

6. Code!

Modify the source code according to your needs, and restart the server as needed – you can always run it as:

npm run start

7. Build and install on the device

When you’re done with your modifications, here’s how to build the executable for the robot:

npm run build

The output file valetudo is a binary file that you can copy to the device:

scp ./valetudo root@192.168.1.42:/usr/local/bin/

Once you’re that far, you hopefully don’t need any further advice.