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  1. Home
  2. General Discussion
  3. Hacking a Neato Robotics BotVac Connected

Hacking a Neato Robotics BotVac Connected

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  • mfalkviddM Offline
    mfalkviddM Offline
    mfalkvidd
    Mod
    wrote on last edited by
    #6

    http://youtu.be/Vua9Z_8aESA is an introduction to Android reverse engineering. It might be useful.

    1 Reply Last reply
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    • hekH Offline
      hekH Offline
      hek
      Admin
      wrote on last edited by
      #7

      @Brutus

      Sorry haven't had time to do much cleaner-hacking during x-mas here. But I must have stripped a bit too much from the zip above (the initial pack was way too big to upload here)..
      Might be easier if you decompile apk yourself to get the full file list.
      http://www.javadecompilers.com/apk

      Anyhow a good starting point would be /res/values/strings.xml which contains the service endpoints

      <string name="beehive_endpoint_staging">https://beehive-staging.neatocloud.com</string>
       <string name="cometa_endpoint_playground">https://cometa-playground.neatocloud.com</string>
       <string name="cometa_endpoint_production">https://cometa.neatocloud.com</string>
      <string name="cometa_endpoint_staging">https://cometa-staging.neatocloud.com</string>
      

      Then you can follow that back in the program where it's used.
      /com/neatorobotics/android/p032e/p042j/C0746c.java
      Then search for C0746c and so on...

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      • B Offline
        B Offline
        Brutus
        wrote on last edited by
        #8

        Thank you for your help.
        I have downloaded the "APK Downloader" add-on for Firefox (https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addon/apk-downloader/) and followed the instructions.
        After downloading te APK I decompiled it at the given website. I now have almost 3000 files ;)

        Will look in the files later. Hope I can find something usefull. Its the first time for me.

        I was wondering did you already find something usefull to use?

        Have a nice day to you all.

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        • sundberg84S Offline
          sundberg84S Offline
          sundberg84
          Hardware Contributor
          wrote on last edited by
          #9

          @hek I was looking at the Neato as well - except it was hart to HA integrate, are you happy with the robot?

          Controller: Proxmox VM - Home Assistant
          MySensors GW: Arduino Uno - W5100 Ethernet, Gw Shield Nrf24l01+ 2,4Ghz
          MySensors GW: Arduino Uno - Gw Shield RFM69, 433mhz
          RFLink GW - Arduino Mega + RFLink Shield, 433mhz

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          • hekH Offline
            hekH Offline
            hek
            Admin
            wrote on last edited by
            #10

            There is nothing wrong with its cleaning abilities. Impressed by their room scanning algorithm.

            m26872M 1 Reply Last reply
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            • hekH hek

              There is nothing wrong with its cleaning abilities. Impressed by their room scanning algorithm.

              m26872M Offline
              m26872M Offline
              m26872
              Hardware Contributor
              wrote on last edited by
              #11

              @hek I'm surprised you didn't research for maximum open source/HA support in first time. Suppose it's to late to change it now? Even if it's easy to hack this one, I think it's a good general principle - to a certain price of course.

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              • hekH Offline
                hekH Offline
                hek
                Admin
                wrote on last edited by
                #12

                Yeah, yeah.. usually good at doing research.. But this one was a black friday find... Didn't have time to do my homework.. :/ Have to pay for that now ....

                m26872M 1 Reply Last reply
                1
                • hekH hek

                  Yeah, yeah.. usually good at doing research.. But this one was a black friday find... Didn't have time to do my homework.. :/ Have to pay for that now ....

                  m26872M Offline
                  m26872M Offline
                  m26872
                  Hardware Contributor
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #13

                  @hek ... but you'll also have more fun. 😉

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                  • B Offline
                    B Offline
                    Brutus
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #14

                    @hek

                    I am now looking at the files you provided. I can't get some logic out of it.

                    You gave some service endpoints and then you pointed to the java file. I don't see the link between these two.

                    Sorry for my noob questions i'm not an programmer.

                    I am only looking for a why to implement the Neato in my domoticz home automation. But google gives very little help. Only desent hit was this link.

                    Greetings.

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                    • K Offline
                      K Offline
                      kalle
                      wrote on last edited by kalle
                      #15

                      Maybe this will help:

                      https://www.neatorobotics.com/resources/programmersmanual_20140305.pdf

                      https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/hbrobotics/zKz_33SD7ys/NSV1gjhiIj4J

                      YveauxY 1 Reply Last reply
                      0
                      • B Offline
                        B Offline
                        Brutus
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #16

                        @Kalle ... I think this isn't for the Neato Botvac Connected. It has a USB port, but we want to control it through the wifi connection it has.

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                        • mfalkviddM Offline
                          mfalkviddM Offline
                          mfalkvidd
                          Mod
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #17

                          I agree that the wifi api seems more natural, but connecting an Arduino to the usb port might prove easier since documentation of the usb api is available.

                          1 Reply Last reply
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                          • tbowmoT Offline
                            tbowmoT Offline
                            tbowmo
                            Admin
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #18

                            It seems (from a quick glance) that you need a USB host device, connected to that USB port.. So that would leave a standard arduino out of the question.

                            Perhaps an raspberry, or another higher end platform running an OS, could be used..

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                            • K kalle

                              Maybe this will help:

                              https://www.neatorobotics.com/resources/programmersmanual_20140305.pdf

                              https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/hbrobotics/zKz_33SD7ys/NSV1gjhiIj4J

                              YveauxY Offline
                              YveauxY Offline
                              Yveaux
                              Mod
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #19

                              @kalle Chances are that the commands & format are identical for the newer wifi model -- companies tend not to reinvent the wheel for each product ;-)
                              You'd only have to find out how these commands are transfered to the BotVac.

                              http://yveaux.blogspot.nl

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                              • Daniel ErikssonD Offline
                                Daniel ErikssonD Offline
                                Daniel Eriksson
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #20

                                What I have come up with so far is that the Neato it self is running a websocket server on port 8081 - and uses some kind of standard Auth-behavior in the headers,

                                Hypertext Transfer Protocol
                                GET /drive HTTP/1.1\r\n
                                Host: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8081\r\n
                                Sec-WebSocket-Key: XXXXXXX==\r\n
                                Sec-WebSocket-Version: 13\r\n
                                Upgrade: websocket\r\n
                                Origin: ws://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8081/drive\r\n
                                Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 09:17:57 GMT\r\n
                                Authorization: NEATOAPP XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX\r\n
                                Connection: Upgrade\r\n
                                \r\n
                                [Full request URI: http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8081/drive]
                                [HTTP request 1/1]

                                There also a port 8080 open but I can not figure out what's running on that one.

                                The communication between the Neato and the central server is handled via a server on Amazon - this traffis is HTTPS though. Next step is to set up a SSLSplit and hope that they don't have a pinned cert.

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                                • hekH Offline
                                  hekH Offline
                                  hek
                                  Admin
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #21

                                  Nice find @Daniel-Eriksson,

                                  Do we really need to know what's happening between the Neato <-> Cloud?
                                  My initial though was to mimic the app to poll status and send commands via the cloud service.

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                                  • Daniel ErikssonD Offline
                                    Daniel ErikssonD Offline
                                    Daniel Eriksson
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #22

                                    If we can figure out what's going on between Cloud <-> Neato we can do a version which is in depended on the Cloud-service being online or not - which also means that we can disallow it internet access

                                    hekH 1 Reply Last reply
                                    0
                                    • B Offline
                                      B Offline
                                      Brutus
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #23

                                      That sounds like music to my ears. It is my device not Neato's

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                                      • Daniel ErikssonD Daniel Eriksson

                                        If we can figure out what's going on between Cloud <-> Neato we can do a version which is in depended on the Cloud-service being online or not - which also means that we can disallow it internet access

                                        hekH Offline
                                        hekH Offline
                                        hek
                                        Admin
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #24

                                        @Daniel-Eriksson said:

                                        If we can figure out what's going on between Cloud <-> Neato we can do a version which is in depended on the Cloud-service being online or not - which also means that we can disallow it internet access

                                        :thumbsup:

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                                        0
                                        • G Offline
                                          G Offline
                                          gardebring
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #25

                                          I recently ventured into writing some custom scripts both for my cloud connected home security system as well as my music streamer at home. It was quite easy to retrieve the commands needed from my android phone using an app I found called "Packet Capture" by the author Grey Shirts. Even https communication could be found. Perhaps this could be a way forward? Following this thread since I am considering getting a Botvac connected but failing to see the point if I would be dependent on a specific app on specific hardware..

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