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.

First, the product works if you assemble it correctly (see my video). My kid and I really enjoyed the features such as auto-driving, obstacle avoidance and etc. The kit really deserves five-star for its functionalities. However, there are a few issues. One issue is that the car kit doesn't come with rechargeable 18650 batteries. I ended up spending some time on Amazon doing research and buying a bundle of these expensive batteries and charger. I wish the car kit can include batteries and charge a little extra. My second major issue is that the manual is poorly written. There are duplicated sections all over and it can confuse people. Most importantly, some key installation steps should be emphasized. For example, my kid was stuck between Step 9-11 on Page 51 (duplicated on Page 72) when attaching camera module to servo package. After quite a while of watching the video of assembled car like a detective to gather clues, I realized that one needed to attach a white rocker arm on Step 9. Then Page 73 says there are two ways to fix the servo 0. I don't think the second way works. Another example is when wiring the ribbon for camera (Page 54). A kid would simply insert a ribbon into the slot. Step 1 on Page 54 should emphasize that one needs to pull the lever out first, insert the ribbon and then push the lever in. In retrospect, the car worked great. I am surprised that the installation of software is very smooth. The assembling process was frustrating sometimes and there is a lot of room for improvement and simplification.

The well designed parts and 128 page instruction manual including the computer code make this car easy to assemble and operate. The ability to handle the testing of each module on a PC via RealVNC facilitates testing, and the phone app provides steering and speed control as well as control of the LED lights, camera and switching to other modes of operation. Tech support provides 24 hour responses via email and was very helpful for straightforward problems. All in all this kit offers a lot for the money and earns a five star rating. However, I encountered a couple problems that should have been handled better and distracted from my overall enjoyment of the project. Next to control from a phone the most useful function is the obstacle avoidance using the ultrasonic sensor for control. The ultrasonic sensor that came with the car kit was defective and was replaced after three weeks for overseas shipping. However, the replacement sensor was also defective, and in spite of my detailed documentation of the problem Freenove refused to replace it. I had an ultrasonic sensor from another project which I was able to use but it had intermittent errors that severely compromised this important function. The other problem was less serious but annoying and time consuming. The code downloaded to control the car had an error which applied less than a third the required power to the wheels for forward motion. Therefore, the car refused to move resulting in several days of emails blaming the problem on the batteries before I finally traced it to the code error. It has been three weeks since this problem was reported to Freenove and a download of the code today showed the error had not been corrected.

マニュアル（PDF）や組み立て動画があるので、初心者でも簡単に作れると思います。 組み立てた後、動作せず、私の手順が違うのかとサポートの方とメールでやり取りしました。 まず驚いたのが、１日以内で返信をくれるという返信の速さ。 メールの内容も丁寧で分かりやすかったです。 何度かやり取りした結果、新しい基盤を送ってくださり、無事に動くようになりました。 トラブルが起きたとしてもメーカーのサポートが充実しているので、安心して購入できる品だと思います！

Liked the kit, but the instructions has some holes and the mobile apps required to control the model leavs a bit to wish for. But over all it has potential and I will most definitely have fun with this one. All the parts are there, well packed and easy to follow instructions, but a bit un clear at some parts. Will get more kits. And I'm planning to upgrade this one.

Rien à dire, juste incroyable Le montage, super simple Le paramétrage pour le raspberry (obligatoire) un peu moins simple mais en suivant les différents tuto, c'est relativement facile à comprendre enfin jusqu'à maintenant