Freenove 4WD Smart Car Kit for Raspberry Pi 5 4 B 3 B+ Zero 2 W, Face Tracking, Line Tracking, Light Tracing, Obstacle Avoidance, App Control, Camera, Servo (Raspberry Pi NOT Included)

It says so in the description, but do note, you need a Raspberry Pi (I used a Pi 3) and two 18650 batteries, which are not included.I was very keen to build this and try it out, so I downloaded the code and set up my Raspberry Pi, shortly after placing my order. Fortunately, I already had a couple of 18650 batteries. So, when the kit arrived the next day, I was good to go. Assembly took about 2 hours.First point to note is that I have big fingers and some of the screws are really tiny – I needed fine tweezers for these.Second point, when assembling the pan and tilt ‘head’, the instructions tell you to plug in the servos and run servo.py to put them in the correct position before assembly. I would recommend carrying out steps 1 to 9 of the 11 illustrated steps (page 51 at time of writing) before connecting the servos.I would also suggest connecting the cables to the camera and ultrasonic units before connecting the ‘face’ to the ‘neck’ as they are lot more accessible at this point.Excepting a couple of fiddly bits, the kit was straight forward to assemble, I ran all the test modules and everything worked first time, except it went backwards instead of forwards – but the instructions covered correcting this. It does everything shown in the Freenove video and can also be controlled directly by a phone app (android in my case). I was impressed by the quality of the build and also that all the code is open source.At the price, having a kit you can control from your phone, pretty much out of the box, is already good value, but the potential for writing your own code is even more appealing and I would imagine would be a great incentive for novice coders. I hope a community will develop where people can share their code and ideas. I also think the kit is ideal for further development – a robot arm would be a cool addition, perhaps Freenove may develop expansion kits in the future.In summary, a great kit, a great learning tool and best of all – open source!

The remote Android app works out of the box and makes this a full-featured remote controllable car to a fair price but actually much more: With all the options, it is a platform that stimulates learning of programming and to develop own projects.My child liked the easy start (to play with the car and the colorful LEDs) and is curious to learn more about programming. I'm sure he will be doing some projects with it as he grows. Otherwise, I will for sure do some fun projects with it. Being open-source, extensions of existing code (in Python) are easily possible.Out of the box, there are several programs included, like the tracking of black lines and obstacle detection. I think these are nice demonstrations of it that show the potential and that ask to be expanded by the users.The vehicle is rather easy to manufacture as there are just 2 Servos to install, took about 1 hour to get it working.Notes: Be careful when attaching the camera head onto the car as the pieces are a bit thin and not very robust.The initial setup of the Raspberry Pi (I used the 3B model) is well described in the tutorial PDF but you should have some technology affinity or interest to learn.I would therefore not classify it as a toy that can be used out of the box but rather a development platform.You can set up the Raspberry Pi such that it automatically runs the server software upon startup.I actually use the same Raspberry Pi for multiple projects as it is not too much effort to unmount/remount it here.The only drawback of the car is that the battery needs to be removed to be charged.However, during development, you can connect the power supply of the Raspberry to reduce the need to charge it.In the robot dog, the charger is embedded which has its advantages.To sum up: I'm very pleased with the experience of this kit, its quality, and potential.The price for it feels more than fair given what you get.I hope FreeNove will continue to make more of such high-quality kits.

The car is easily assembled clear diagrams and instructions. Programming set up is clear and car performs well. Programming is by using Python 2.7 I had a raspberry pi4 and did not realise 2.7 is actually included but needed activating.(support informed me Python 3 programs are being developed). The main control program does not work with remote desktop so need to use VCN. My car had commands round the wrong way but programs are clear and it was easy to amend. I had to contact support and received prompt reply. All in all a good starting model for learning robotics.