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.

This is the second item I have bought from FREENOVE for my Raspberry Pi. The other being the Ultimate Starter Kit. I am a complete beginner so both these kits have been great. I read the other reviews and watched the Youtube video before buying. The instructions are easy to follow and guide you through the whole build process. The code itself can be downloaded from FREENOVE or you can type it in yourself. If you have any issues or difficulty then you can simply email FREENOVE for help. Being a beginner I got stuck with something very simple with regard to downloading and implementing the code. Once I got over that stumbling block it was easy. FREENOVE seem to have an almost 24 hour response guy as I got help within a very short time, even when I mailed quite late in the evening. I was a little put off by the reviews complaining of batteries being expensive on Amazon. FREENOVE pointed me to Ebay where I got some for £2.99. The build went well without anything too fiddly. It’s satisfying to get it together. My kids were really impressed. I still have a couple of little glitches to figure, which makes the process more enjoyable mind of, but it is working. I’ve not got onto FREENOVE yet for help but if I can’t figure it then I will. On the whole I think this is a great kit. There is no way I was going to piece together the parts to build anything similar and I doubt I’d ever figure the code either, so all in all a good option to move me forward a little with my Pi. Although I’ve not got that far yet I am sure that the individual parts will be useful later when I try other projects.

Nice product however the design could be improved significantly. Servos are used to move the distance sensor from one side to the other every second to scan the area, this makes alot of noise. The power doesn't last long and the motors could handle the weight of extra batteries but there is only space for 2 x18650s. These power both the motors and the rpi, however if I only add power to the rpi it won't power the motors. It would also be nice to be able to charge without having to remove the batteries.

I decided to build the car with a Pi Zero W H because of the low battery drain. I needed to get a special cable as indicated in the instructions. It ends up very neat as you can see in the photos. All functions work in this configuration but I think things like face tracking might be slicker with the recommended pi 3 or 4. When first building the car I used a couple of batteries that I had lying around. The advice from Freenove is to use batteries that can sustain a high discharge rate. This is good advice. Using poor quality batteries results in the low battery warning buzzer sounding after only a fairly short use. Good batteries cure the problem! One point is that you need to remove the batteries to charge them. I found that making loops out of cable ties makes the process of removal much simpler but anything thick might interfere with the battery fitting properly. The kit is quick to assemble since much of the building is securing parts to the baseboard which contains the control components. The instructions are generally very good but can be a bit repetitive, e.g. VNC player and the assembly of the pan/tilt module which is covered twice. Best to read the instructions before you start so you know which bits to pay attention to and go straight to VNC viewer if you can. The car is a genuine four-wheel drive which means that each wheel can be controlled separately. This allows the car to be steered by having wheels go at different speeds (compared to rotating the wheels). On soft carpets the grip of the tyres is not as good so the steering is not as precise. Freenove emphasise the support they give, encouraging you to ask for help. When I first put the kit together, I could not get the buzzer to work nor the ultrasonic ranging. They are based in China so the reply came back on the following morning. It started off "Thank you for choosing Freenove. We are fully responsible for any concerns." which is a clear indication that they will do their best to sort out any problems that you have. My problem turned out to be that when I fitted the bridge between the pi and the baseboard, I had managed to bend three of the connectors to the side of the plug so they did not connect. Re-fitted and all was well. If you are anything like me you look at other kits after you buy one. There are a surprising number of car kits out there. Some have more features than this one, but are more expensive. Some have a sturdier sturdy chassis, but are more expensive. Some kits are cheaper, but do less. One of the significant differences between kits is whether the wheels are fixed or whether they turn to steer. On this kit they are fixed but Freenove do have another kit with steerable wheels. I came to the 5 star rating by weighing up price, features and support. The amazon review site seems a bit weird asking for ratings on Thickness and Sheerness. Perhaps artificial intelligence is not as intelligent as one might hope!

This kit doesn’t come with batteries and required a level of computer science that as a medical dr I found difficult never mind a child! Would suite a teenager who wants to pursue a career I. Computer science or someone who has a lot of know how. I thought once the VNC server and viewer were set up that I could just use the app but having spent many many hours and lots of money on various connections and monitors and batteries. I still haven’t managed to get it to work. Very disappointed

The Freenove Smart Car for Raspberry Pi V3.0 looks great on paper. The hardware build is solid, the components are well-made, and the mechanical design is clever. But the software side? A total mess. The included Python codebase is ancient — it depends on deprecated camera libraries, hard-coded parameters, and interactive prompts that make it unusable in a headless setup. Nothing runs out of the box on modern Raspberry Pi OS (Bookworm). Even basic features like the onboard LEDs don’t respond to Freenove’s own scripts because they’re locked behind the board’s microcontroller firmware — undocumented, inaccessible, and totally ignored by the Pi. You end up spending hours editing scripts, patching files, and disabling prompts that shouldn’t exist in 2025. The hardware is fine, but the software clearly hasn’t been maintained. If you’re an experienced developer, you can hack it to life. If you’re a beginner hoping to just plug it in and go — save yourself the frustration. Freenove, please: update your code for current Raspberry Pi OS and make it actually run out of the box.