It’s just DNS based, and iirc dont require any major effort other than patching the hosts file.

Incorrect. That was technically sorta the case back on the S5 (and even there it needed firmware modifications), yes, but if DNS redirection was all it needs, then why even root the bots in the first place. Just do that on a network level and be done with it.

Interesting.

This seems to be a model-specific quirk and moreso a side effect of getting Valetudo to work rather than an explicit goal - the same option does not appear in DustBuilder for my model (Roborock S5, still going strong after 941 hours of cleaning time).

I feel like I should check out this DEFCON talk though.

I learned something new today, thank you for that

Given that you are the author of the project, I do consider you the higher authority on what it can and cannot do.

But to me, there's a slight distinction to be made here - Valetudo allows you to directly control the robot from a server running locally on the robot, giving you the option to not interact with a cloud service in order to remotely control the robot vacuum.

This doesn't immediately imply that the robot is directly prevented from passing information to a cloud service - just that the cloud service does not have to be involved as a command proxy.

The larger feature I was thinking of was not only serving a local server to allow commands to come in directly, but also actively prevent any outgoing connections from the robot vacuum to its manufacturers cloud.

Again, you are the author - you know far better what Valetudo does and does not do, so your information weighs heavier here.

I guess I can also mention that I will be pleasantly surprised if my Chinese robot vacuum has actually been prevented from logging any information back home as a part of me having run Valetudo for the past years.