I had a roomba i5 fully stop working earlier this year. It said it couldn't connect to the internet but I believe what it meant was "some aspect of the remote server has decayed to the point that it no longer works with this platform". I threw it in the trash, vowed to never let this happen again, and got a valetudo machine.
I think the lights have been off for some time already.
This is surprising to me because not long ago I bought a Roomba i5 specifically because it was one of the few robot vacuums that could still work fully off-line (in the "just vacuum everything reachable" mode, but I don't need anything else).
We moved this year and couldn't get my old(ish) Roomba i5 to work in my new wifi easily. I've been meaning to debug the problem further, but if it can be confirmed that it's an iRobot issue and there's nothing I can do, it would save some effort.
It sucks, though, that I can use my fucking vacuum cleaner because a remote server of the manufacturer has decayed. Does anyone know if there are robotic vacuums that work fully locally without remote servers?
I can't give 100% confirmation, but it was working one day and not the next, with no changes to my network along the way.
Yes, it is an absolutely infuriating state of affairs and one could claim we were naive to not see this coming. Needing to be this cynical is the root of crisis of trust. The only thing we can rely on is that everything is a race to the bottom.
That being said, there aren't many commercial offline robot vacuums. I bought a secondhand roborock unit that is on the approved list put out by valetudo. I got one that required some disassembly to flash, which maybe lowers the market price. It's been working great and the home assistant hooks are working. There isn't a company on the planet that is in between me and my robot vacuum now.
I have an i3 controlled by Home Assistant, it is on an "IoT" network without access to the Internet. Works like a charm. The integration allows to start, stop and view information like battery level, area cleaned, issues, etc. No mapping though.
The only caveat is that to associate it with a WiFi network, the legacy app is required. So if the app is pulled from the app stores, it may not be able to connect again after a factory reset. I don't think the pairing requires access to the Internet but it uses a bluetooth protocol that I don't think anyone reverse engineered yet.
Edit: I vaguely remember that mine also stopped working a year or so ago. I factory reset it, re-paired it and it has been working well so far.
As an aside, I will say that municipal waste has antipatterns for responsible waste disposal. Someone could:
A) disassemble their ewaste, remove the battery, look up which of 10 days a year they can drop it off, and pay a $50+ fee
B) quietly put it in their trash
I'll let you guess what most people are actually doing.
Contrast this with car batteries where manufacturers pay for batteries that are not responsibly handled and consumers are incentivized to dispose of them responsibly with a financial carrot. The manufacturer pays for the disposal, passes that cost on to the consumer, and the consumer gets the money back when they responsibly dispose of it.
I think the lights have been off for some time already.