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

Really good kit for the money, Worked staright out of the box, Remeber you need to buy a Raspberry Pi and Batteries + Charger , but kits is easy to build and lots of spares in there as well.

OK so I know it is clearly stated, but be aware, you need to supply batteries, charger and Raspberry Pi. I used a Raspberry Pi 3. This is my 3rd Freenove kit. I have been impressed by the quality of their kits and their outstanding customer support and the big hexapod is no exception. I believe problems can happen with any purchase; it is how they are dealt with that is the measure of a company. My kit had one mis-cut piece. I contacted Freenove support and they had a replacement in the post the next day, they also offered me an STL file to build my own if I had access to a 3d printer. I consider that to be 5 star support. The kit included 2 screw drivers and a spanner, which between them were suitable for all the nuts and bolts. Freenove do supply a few spares of each nut and bolt, but the servos do not include spares, so be careful with the screws for securing the servo arms! I found a very helpful set of build videos on you tube (search for 'Blade Dreams'). If you do follow the video, a couple of points to note: Blade Dreams had an issue with the orientation of the ultrasonic connection wire - the tutorial is now updated so just follow that. Blade Dreams also inserted rubber bushes in his servo mounts - I don't believe this is necessary. The Freenove tutorial is clear and easy to follow, except, perhaps, when connecting and orientating the servos. The golden ruler is never connect or disconnect anything when the Pi is powered up, always shut it down and power it off first. So first connect the servos, then turn on and run the server program. Everything else went smoothly and was a lot of fun. It sailed through the set up tests, I calibrated the leg positions using the supplied calibration sheet and now it's good to go. One aspect of Freenove products that I particularly like is the open source code. Having had fun creating new movements and actions with my Freenove dog kit, I am now looking forward to exploring and tinkering with the Hexapod code. I have found with previous kits that any questions I have about both the kit and the code are always promptly and helpfully answered by the support team. I think the coding side is a big plus, but, having built the kit, it is good to go with the supplied PC software or via a phone app so software tinkering is purely optional. Compared with my previous kits, the Hexapod is big! It also feels very sturdy. I am very pleased with my purchase and I'm looking forward to further exploring its potential. I would recommend the Freenove Robot User group on Facebook facebook.com/groups/333208747878884 which is a recently formed group for Freenove robot owners with the intention of sharing tips, mods and code. I shot the video immediately after calibration, I'm not very good at filming and controlling the robot (via android app) at the same time which is why things get a bit jerky particularly when I move the head!

As the kit was sold out in Germany I had to buy one of the few remaining in the UK. The robot is easy to assemble because there are good instructions - better than what I've seen out of China before. It is however very advisable to watch the Youtube videos where the assemply is shown in every step. Sometimes the instructions in the PDF file are not in the correct sequence and sometimes a missing information is given only in the video. The video suggests that everything can be assembled very fast in a few hours. In reality however the M4 screws and nuts require considerable force and there is the danger that you break parts. Quality issues: One of the battery case lids was broken when it arrivd but replaced by the support. I had to replace 4 of the 18 leg servo motors because they were shaking instead of moving. Here I also got help from the support. If you want to write your own code you have to interface to the software provided by Freenove. This is a challenge since it is in no way documented and doesn't follow the standards for Python for readability. If you want to have more than a remote control toy (I want to make it move autonomously) you will soon see that the ultrasonic sensor is of little value for obstacle avoidance. The narrow beam cannot find all the chair legs where the robot's legs get stuck. The legs were hitting very hard on our wooden floor and made a terrible noise. I added "feet" of silk clay to the tips of the legs which has the rigidity of soft rubber. The support deserves a merit. If you send a mail in the evening you get the answer for breakfast.

Amazing product. Very good for programming beginners. Assembly take some time but once it's done it's a lot of fun with it. Also support from Freenove is very quick and they helping if u have any issues. My LED module had some problems and wasn't working properly - they send me new one and now everything is running as it should. :)

Thoroughly recommend this product, really good price for a fully functioning raspberry PI powered robot. 10 out of 10. Bought this as an introduction to robotics and also for some experience using machine learning. The robot uses OpenCV for the machine learning although you could use whatever you want it you're adventurous. It took me a good couple of days to assemble in my spare time as there are a lot of parts. Definitely worth watching the assembly video and then going through the written instructions while assembling the robot as the instructions are a little sparse on detail in a few spots. I had a minor problem with one of the servos twitching when it was powered up. This turned out to be faulty and their support with replacing it was fantastic so can't complain. It comes with apps for Android, Mac and Windows to control it via WiFi. Once it's built then it's up to you what you get it to do by coding in Python. When you get to this point there isn't an awful lot of information available on their site but they are keen to help via email and I'm hoping they'll release more documentation and tools as time goes on. I am looking to replace the Raspberry PI with a Jetson Nano which is a similar single board computer but with an Nvidia GPU to accelerate machine learning and it also comes with tons of support and examples for all the major ML models like Tensor Flow.

Build was interesting and not too difficult. The most important part of the build starts on page 61 where you have to set the servos to a known position and then attach the legs to the chassis. This is important as if you don't do this correctly the robot will not operate correctly. Instructions are clear in the most part, but take your time and double check as you go along. Once built, the camera didn't work, so I contacted support. The response was quick, helpful and I managed to fix the camera. I would recommend this robot, for the price it's a good robust unit.

I've bought several RPi robots and this is the best by far. The kit is really high quality with clear build instructions - both written and video. Also great software, including mobile & Mac clients that I've used. The extra features like the face recognition and LED are nice extras. Overall a great kit at a good price.

Amazing Robot kit, very easy to build and setup using the instructions that can be downloaded from the link provided on the box. All functions work well. Wonderful kit to get started with coding/robotics.