FREENOVE Robot Dog Kit for Raspberry Pi 5 4 B 3 B+ Zero 2 W, Walking, Self Balancing, Face Recognition, Ball Tracing, Ultrasonic Ranging, App Control, Camera, Servo (Raspberry Pi NOT Included)

Just for some perspective, as a child I built radio control cars and I currently do a little programming at my place of employment so this was something I believed that I would enjoy ... and boy I was right. Over the holiday break, I cleared off our kitchen table and went to work. My first impression was that this kit was packaged well and the pieces seemed to be of a quality higher than I expected since it's price was reasonable. I downloaded the instructions and programming. After review, I also ordered a raspberrry pi 4, memory card, hdmi cable adapter for the pi, and made sure to purchase the recommended special batteries that are mentioned in the instructions. I didn't want to mess around as others who complained about charging or other power issues because they wanted to use batteries that came in their $10 fleabay flashlight. The instructions are great. I learned about installing the operating system on the pi which was cool and will come in handy for future projects. I needed a usb mouse, keyboard, and hdmi computer monitor to get the pi setup. I just used my iphone charger to power the pi. As far as building the dog itself, please note that some of the pieces are very small but just take your time and you'll be fine. The kit included a few extra pieces with I appreciated. I felt a great amount of satisfaction once I actually powered it up for the first time. The software did crash once but a quick reboot fixed that. It doesn't go on carpet. I cannot recommend this kit enough and I hope I can find others who have this so we can share ideas! Five Stars!

This was a gift and it was I while before I collected all of the required additional components--FAR more than the bare Raspberry Pi I received with it. If you haven't used a Raspberry Pi previously you will likely need an appropriate power supply, a micro-SD card and micro HDMI to HDMI cable/adapter. Initial setup of both the Raspberry Pi and its interface with your controlling device(s) is much easier when you connect monitor, keyboard and mouse Raspberry. You will also need lithium ion batteries and charger in a size (18650 with or w/o "button top") that has almost no chance of local availability. The dog is VERY finicky about surface! Pile carpet = impossible. Ceramic tile = fair to poor depending upon the width and depth of the grout lines. Hardwood = fair to good. Laminate = poor to fair. Vinyl/asphalt = good to excellent. Smooth concrete (basement/garage) = excellent. Rough concrete = excellent but certain to damage the little "teeth" in the hard acrylic feet that provide the friction/grip. Smooth, unfinished plywood = perfect. While this kit certainly serves as a fair introduction to robotics and especially robotic control (as in the actual programming of such and not just supplied "tricks" and basic operation) only an extremely precocious youth below their mid teens is likely in my estimation to successfully assemble and operate the kit without considerable assistance. I found the protective adhesive paper on both sides of the acrylic body pieces very difficult to remove--impossible for me start with my fingernails and surprisingly difficult with the common x-acto blade that typically works very well in such applications. The acrylic is obviously laser cut so perhaps such makes the edges particularly difficult to "start." STUDY THE INSTRUCTIONS WELL!!!! There are three separate tasks--hardware preparation, software installation/setup in both the host (controller) and client (robot dog) and assembly of the robot itself. You will work at these three tasks simultaneously at times. Assembly instruction for the physical robot and its hardware are based almost purely on a sequence of illustrations. I've worked with such instructions many times. These are easily in the bottom third of quality. I made a few assembly errors one of which required significant disassembly. The problem as I saw it was not related to the complexity of the construction but the lack of clarity in the illustrations to include the full scope of a single step and proper orientation of some pieces. The three-conductor ribbon cable serving the LED light module on mine had a reversed connector on one end. I noticed the problem during assembly as the wire colors did not match the illustration at one end. I didn't know if it was a problem with the instructions or the cable until testing when the LED module proved dead. I wrote the email address in the instructions to have a reply the next morning. I was given instruction on how to remove the conductors from the connector but unfortunately a solder burr on one of them damaged the connector during disassembly as it was "stuck" compared to the rest. I again wrote to have a reply the next morning that a new cable was being shipped. It came from China as I suspected and took about two weeks. Otherwise the general quality of the materials seems good for something of this nature--a slightly glorified toy. The surprisingly short safe running time of three minutes doesn't say much for the durability of the servos but the "next step" in still "toy" robot quality involves a pretty much exponential increase of price. Nearly everything assembles with tiny bolts and nuts provided in somewhat excess quantity. While highly dexterous my fingers are very large yet I had no undue problem with the tiny hardware. The seemingly far too long bolts used in some places are so long to make them reasonably easy to access. Many of the pieces have tiny ridges to aid in positioning nuts making it reasonably easy to install particularly difficult connection with the bolt beneath. Even with nothing to hold down the tiny nut but gravity and not perfectly upside-down you can thread the bolt through it with far less frustration than you may imagine. This construction means that you can easily and repeatedly assemble and disassemble the robot without damage. An important exception to this construction are gears that attach to the servo pinions. Made of white nylon like the pinions and all the rest of the gears, they attach with sheet metal type screws. These gears take a LOT of pressure to push onto the pinions yet the servos feel rather flimsy and not able to take the pressure. The gear is often installed after the servo with things so positioned to make it even more difficult to press the gear onto the pinion without forcing and almost certainly damaging something. The mounting screw will fully seat the gear--the first time you assemble. Do not expect the same degree of such "pull down power" should you need to reassemble! One of mine is perilously close to becoming a full-blown "spinner" with little or no holding power.

I am a seasoned roboticist with extended experience in building robots from commercial kits as well as my creations. Searching for an inexpensive micro controller for my students, I stumbled on a cute and inexpensive robot called Micro Rover by Freenove, based on the ubiquitous BBC MicroBit card. I then realized that this company offered other, more sophisticated robots based on Arduino and Raspberry Pi at a very competitive price. I tried a few and the last I built is the Robot Dog for which I’m writing this review. This Kit is one of the best I have ever built. It consist of no less than thirteen servos, a Pi Camera, an ultrasonic sensor, some RGB LEDs, sturdy laser cut body parts, all the necessary cables, connectors and accessories plus a well-designed PCB that connects everything together. As a bonus, Freenove provides an outstanding instruction booklet in PDF format (122 page with clear pictures, codes and data tables). This kit may be a little daunting for rank beginners, but it is so well designed, built and documented that I would unconditionally recommend it for anybody interested in learning how modern autonomous robots are built, programmed and controlled. It runs on two easy to find 18650 3.7V batteries and it needs a Raspberry Pi as a controlling SBC (Single Board Computer). This is not a frustrating kit with missing parts, incomprehensible instructions and inexistent customer support. Even in the remote case of you getting stuck, Freenove offers excellent personalized online help. Roberto Pensotti

Good product worked as expected.

以前に、Freenove_Hexapod_Robot_Kit を購入し、 面白かったので、こちらも購入してみました。 マイコンボードRaspberry Piは付属しないので、少し高額になりますが、 私は、使用していないRaspberry Pi 3B+ を持っていたので、迷うことなく購入しました。 サポートは、迅速に対応してくれたので助かりました。 Raspberry Piの使用経験者またはLinuxの経験者であり、 ラジコンなどでサーボを使用したことのある方でしたら、 スムーズに完成まで たどり着けると思います。 ダウンロードしたファイルの場所（ファイルパス）が説明書と異なる場合、 ユーザー名が説明書と異なる場合など、ある程度のLinuxの知識は必要になると思います。 私が使用した機材などは、 Raspberry Pi 3B+ Windows10 パソコン Raspberry Pi OSは64ビットを使用しました。 2022-09-22-raspios-bullseye-arm64.img.xz 今はOSのインストールがとても簡単なことに気付きました。 ダウンロードしたファイルを実行するだけで、イメージャーが起動し、 後は指示に従うだけで、SDカードに書き込めます。 ここで使用する VNCサーバーやPythonなどは既にOSに含まれていましたので、 追加でインストールするものは何もありませんでした。 私はVNCを使って、Windows10マシンからRaspberry Piを操作しました。 （チュートリアルどおり） 以下、大まかな流れを説明します。 ここで使用するソフトウェアは、メーカーサイト、またはGitHubからダウンロードして使います。 本体を組み立てにあたって、サーボのニュートラル点を出す必要があります。 私はサーボテスターを持っていましたので、それを使用しました。 チュートリアルどおり では、各サーボを制御基板に接続し、 setup.py を実行します。 組み立て終了後、 test.py を実行して、配線などをチェックします。 正常であれば、 ロボット側で、main.py を実行し、 WindowsPC側でwindows.exeを実行し、LAN経由でロボットに接続します。 その後、 キャリブレーションなどの調整をします。 ロボットの操作は、パソコンやスマホからLAN経由で行います。 スマホには、メーカーが提供するアプリをインストールします。 Freenoveのキットには、必ず予備パーツが入っています。 このキットでは、 アクリルパーツが数点 サーボが１つ ボルト・ナット・ビスがそれぞれ数個 ですが、サーボが１つ不良品でした。 中を点検したら、モーターのはんだ付けがとれていました。 総合的に、 完成度の高いキットだと思います。特にチュートリアル（組立説明書）はよくできています。 また、サポートも迅速で良いと感じました。

It took me some time to put this robot dog together but it was a lot of fun. If you follow the tutorial most most steps are understandable and work well. If things are unclear you can always send a mail to the Freenove support team and they will usually answer already by the next morning. They are very helpful and have in one case even sent me a replacement board. Most difficulties I had with installing the right debian OS and later testing it. Once the camera software didn't work until finally I had to re-install the whole OS and then it worked. Installing the opencv software was a pain since there have been many changes recently and it took me some time to sort it all out. Some Linux troubleshooting skills are certainly helpful. Now the robot dog is all up and running and it can really walk forward, backward and sideways and there are a lot more things to explore. For example the dog can recognize a face and act on it. The tutorial encourages you to write new software and that will be the greatest fun part. I am looking into using some AI to improve the walking or follow or act on seeing some objects. If you like to explore a completely new robot type and have fun putting hardware and software together this is for you! Also a great example for practicing on Python on a practical example.

Instructions ok. Product quality ok. The perspex may break if one tries too hard. Just repair with superglue if breaks. But the servos were bad. I have 4 down and replacement came free but after a month still not delivered, perhaps due to covid. Ihad to spend another 100$ from amazon to try replace with diff brand s of servos... So what i mean is a finely designed product and very good customer service response, but somewhat servos gave me trouble. They are the lower end servos to begin with. They will heat up as a sign of failure. Presumably so for a basic kit of this price but could freenove do more qc for the servos at packing?

Es entretenido de montar pero despues se disfruta haciendolo funcionar