SunFounder Smart Robot Car Kit Compatible With Arduino UNO R3

This is one of the longest reviews I’ve written.

Here’s the tl;dr: Great kit, easy to assemble, works out of the box, iPhone app installed easily, website provided code and IDE for advanced users. This is a great product for people considering getting into FIRST or other robotics programs. Kudos to SunFounder.

Assembling the car:
I am 70, I’ve lost sight in one eye so poor depth perception, and my fingers are a little stiff these days. I’ve been building models, crystal radio sets, erector sets, heath kits, slot cars, bicycles, lawn mower engines, motorcycles, cars, and computers for the past 60 years. When I saw this, I knew I had to revisit my childhood! The assembly took me three hours of relaxed quiet time. Not too many years ago, it would have taken less than half that time. I chose a well lit place with lots of surface area. I didn’t want to lose any of the tiny metric screws that came with the kit. I used the tools provided for the first two hours just to prove that it could be done. For the last hour I switched to a good quality small Phillips head screw driver as the one provided does not grip the screw heads very well. The instructions were very clear, well illustrated, and easy to follow. The one item that they could have explained better was the tiny connector that attaches the camera lens to the camera board. It uses a tiny flip-up connector like a SATA drive in a computer so it wasn’t hard to figure out. Later, when I watched the YouTube video on their website, I found that this detail was well explained. I recommend you watch the video first. It is only 17 minutes long and would have saved me some time had I watched it first. The other thing that you need to be careful about is the orientation of the wheels. The inside of the wheels are marked L and R, but you need to orient them according the illustrated instruction sheet. The L and R are good for the front wheels, but the rear wheels go on the opposite sides. The kit comes with a roll of electrical tape, which is not needed for the assembly, two spare connecting cables, at least two each extra of all the nuts, screws, and standoffs, and some other extras. I think that if you have built a computer from components, or assembled a complete Radio Controlled car or plane, and have patience, a good attention span, and attention to detail, then you can build this kit.

Operating the car:
While you charge the car for the first time, read the manual online. This will tell you how to download the app to your iPhone or iPad, or Android device, how to turn on the car, switch the camera on, connect to its WIFI network, reset its firmware, and calibrate it. Some of these steps were a little challenging for me but without too much frustration I got the car turned on, sending video to my phone, and operating. Nice! Adjusting the avoidance detection units was the hardest and I’m still not sure what potentiometers did the trick but I eventually got it dialed in so it stopped crashing into stuff and would follow my hand.

Programming the car:
I have not written any code at this point. I did download and install the IDE (Integrated Development Environment), and the code that comes loaded on the controller board. I was a C++ programmer for several decades so looking through the code was a nice look back at my past. The program for this car consists of a setup section and a main loop that looks for events and acts on them. It’s like the days of old when your program was the only thing running on the computer. I will definitely be doing some geeking out this winter and I have a god daughter that is in the FIRST robotics program – I introduced her to programming a few years back – and I can’t wait to show her this car. I almost said “toy” but stopped myself. This is a serious learning tool and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to be exposed to simple robotics. This kit rocks!

Neat kit but was missing some crucial parts to brace some of the electronics so very frustrating.

This was fun to put together and easy to follow those instructions for the most part. The ultrasonic sensors on the front are easy to get popped backwards and a bit of a pain to get the pins back in. After putting it together there’s some tuning that needs to be done which doesn’t have the greatest instructions. For example there are 2 pots on each IR collision sensor and the instructions just say to adjust them until they sense at the proper distance. Okay, what does each of the pots do? No idea, just fiddle with them both. The included remote also has limited functionality and can’t really be used to control it like an RC car as it doesn’t seem to turn correctly. It is easier to drive with the phone app but that’s also a bit odd with poor instructions. It’s setup like you can create a custom controller but mostly that just allows moving the buttons around, with no help mapping the buttons to new functionality you could program into the car. It’s a good quality kit and there is a lot of documentation, it’s just hard to follow at times.

If you give this as a gift, make sure the giftee likes to assemble their items before use. You assemble the car and then program the car to do various things. I would recommend this for teens and adults, not children as it can be frustrating for some and does take time to put it together, figure out the app, etc that youger ages might not enjoy. My husband thought this would be a fun kit to introduce some coding while still being able to have fun with a remote control car.

I’m a 56-year-old guy who’s still a kid at heart, and when I saw a YouTube video of this car racing around, forwards, backwards, then sideways, diagonally, etc., I thought, “I have to get me one of those!!” Anyway, I ordered it on Amazon, got it the next day, and put the whole thing together in about 90 minutes. And I have big, chubby fingers, so I had to manage the screws, washers, and nuts very carefully, since they are super small. There was so much involved in building it correctly that I thought I definitely must have screwed up something along the way. But miraculously, it worked perfectly the first time!

I love how the mecanum wheels work, and it’s super cool to see the car in action. But I also loved that I built the whole thing myself! I have yet to start digging into the programming (only used play mode so far), but I’m eager to learn how to program the Arduino to make the wheels do what I want them to do! If you’re into Arduinos, remote control cars, model building, robots, programming, etc., I highly recommend. you check this out!

子供も大人も楽しめる、教育玩具用ロボットキットです。
プラモデルの組み立てが好きな人は、抵抗なく楽しめると思います。
取説が英語ですが、大体の感覚で組み立てられます。
子供と一緒に組み立てましたが、3時間ぐらいかかりました。

This was not a simple project, but lots of fun putting together with the kids. There are YouTube videos you can watch that help. I didn’t watch beforehand so it took a couple of hours with the kids. They had fun, and now that it’s going it has many features. For example, you can use an app to control it. The camera feature is pretty cool, the kids love it. The car goes forward, backwards and sideways. This is great for kids in STEM and want to learn code.