DS UNO R3 robot

The BuildThis is one of the simplest builds I’ve done in a long time. I like building electronic kits. Aside from soldering the motors, this was just a matter of mounting boards and plugging in USB cords. It’s upgradeable with infrared and ultrasonic sensors, lights and even a horn. The chassis isn’t a cheap plexi chassis. It seems to be a very strong.ControlThis wasn’t quite as easy due to my network settings. Your router address MUST be set to 192.168.1.1. That took me 2 days to figure out. Once I finally asked the seller for help, it was sorted out quickly.OverallIt’s a fun little bot. The camera is as easy to control as the bot. I have yet to drain the battery pack even after all of the testing and trying to figure out the connection issues. My daughter’s always wanted a bot that she can control and program. I know she’ll love this one!

Great project however the motors connect to the circuit board in a cheep way… a bit disappointed in the quality of the wire they give to connect the motors to the board.

Not sure if they changed what is in package or not. Package did not contain any disk so had to try and download apps and software. Instructions suck. I am ok with electronics and mechanical components so It was not difficult to figure out. My issues are box was missing screws to assemble and it appears that the main body has either changed or I got the wrong one because none of the mounting holes match up to the nylon standoffs for mounting the wifi board. The main board is also blank it does not have any control software installed. I have been unable to find any info of reburning the basic control software to the board or instructions to do so. They are sending another kit and I will update if that kit has all hardware and a working control board.

I bought this project for an Astronomy outreach event (think Mars Rover), but also because I thought my 8-year old daughter, who likes coding already, would have fun putting it together with me and using the graphical-based coding program to program the rover to do stuff on her own. Unfortunately, that didn't go quite as planned.First, the assembly instructions were terrible. Most everything that comes with it are in what I am naively assuming is Chinese (I apologize if this is the incorrect language that I reference throughout this review). If you're technically-minded, you can get the gist of the assembly from the pictures, but when it came to cutting the wires to wire the wheels into place, it doesn't tell you how long to cut them, so I cut them to the length assumed from the relative size scale shown in the picture with the cut wires shown next to the wheel motors. This was a bad assumption, and my wires were too short to reach the ports I needed to insert them into on the Arduino. For those reading this, just cut the green (or at least, mine was green) wiring provided into 8 equal parts. I also had a heck of a time getting the little support pieces that bolted the wheel motors onto the main platform into the slots they belonged in. I ended up having to file a few of them narrower and otherwise hammer them into place (not exactly something my 8-year old could do...).There were a couple other things I had to "guess" on in the assembly, but I did finally get it assembled well enough to run... (foreshadowing). Now, I needed software to control it. The Amazon page showed both the ability to "program" the Rover via an Arduino graphical coding app as well as an app on your phone that connected to the rover's camera and allows you to control the movement of the rover. I was hoping I could just download whatever I needed, but no such luck. The Rover did come with a disk, so I assumed the software was on the disk. There is admittedly an apparently good deal of content on the disk (I haven't yet digested it all), including some assembly videos to help with that. Unfortunately, there was no indication of this in the instructions, so I didn't look on the disk before I had completed the assembly. Also, a good portion of the disk content (just like the paper instructions) is in Chinese. Even some of the file names! So there are README files telling customers they may have to rename things if their computers can't process the foreign (for me) Chinese characters. This all seems ridiculous for something being sold on Amazon ".COM", i.e., in the USA. Also, a note on the assembly videos (that ultimately showed what I had discovered with the wheel wiring) - the videos are all also presented in Chinese, where they are talking almost continuously. However, they only flash up a single English subtitle sentence every so often, giving some vague instructions. So, again, if you are technically minded or can get all you need to know out of just watching someone else assemble this thing, great! Otherwise... maybe look for something else with instructions in a language you can understand.I have not yet dug around the disk long enough to find the graphical coding program that will allow you to code something for the rover to do and then upload it, but I did find the folder with the mobile Apps for controlling the rover like a remote control car.There were only three files in folder. I have an Android phone, so I tried using the Android version first. It's not something that's available in the Google Play or Android App store, so I had to copy the file onto my phone and "run" it. Unfortunately, it would never start. I simply get an error that it "stopped unexpectedly" or something. I later noticed from the filename that I think this is only compatible with Android OS version 7.xx, and I'm now on 8.XX . Maybe that's why? I tried going to the website listed for the rover that constantly pops up in a bunch of the videos, but I couldn't find a newer version to download, and the website in general was a waste of time to visit. I eventually asked a question on the product's Amazon page, and did get a quick response - to PM the seller for an updated version of the Android software. I haven't tried that because I also own an iPad, so I switched to trying that version.The iOS file in the disk folder for the Mobile app is simply a PNG file showing a QR code, and luckily I was able to find and download the App in the iOS App Store. This showed much more promise. I was able to install it and connect to the Rover's Wifi signal without a problem. The problems arose, however, when I actually got connected and tried to move the Rover. The app starts with a joystick control that is supposed to move the rover forward, back, left, and right, but the joystick only moved the rover forward or back and to the right - or in other words, I could only move in circles. In addition, the user can move the camera by using your finger anywhere else on the screen and holding and tracking the direction you want, only the camera moved left and right when I swiped up and down, and up and down with I swiped left and right. In other words, the controls were mixed up. Similarly, I finally found a setting that supposedly controls separately the left and right wheel motor speed. The Rover moves quite quickly, and I wanted to try to slow it down because we're going to have kids controlling it. Well, it didn't matter if I turned both the left and right speed controls to zero, the rover didn't move any more slowly. However, I found that if I moved the left speed all the way to zero, and the right to 100, then my problem of only being able to turn in circles disappeared, and I could now control the rover to both turn and move forward and backward. Yet, all was not well, as the joystick controls were also incorrect in that they were also like a mirror image of what they should be - forward and back were left and right and vice versa.I finally realized that I could just rewire the rovers motors and camera controls to make is so that the directions in the app matched the actual movements. And before you think it, yes, I did wire it as stated in the instructions the first time. I double and triple checked everything. So while frustrating, this at least was surmountable, though the rover was still difficult to control with the joystick because it moves so quickly.At this point, I handed the rover over to a colleague to play with. She was able to find another setting that changed the joystick to 4 toggle buttons for the 4 directions, but once you press the button, it stays moving, so rather than just lifting your finger to stop, you have to press it again to stop. This is going to be difficult for kids to do...Ultimately, our other goal with this was to be able to program in a time delay to the rover so that when the user tells the rover to make some movement or camera slew, there is a couple second time delay before it does this. This is to simulate engineers on Earth trying to navigate and communicate with an actual Mars Rover, where there is a communication delay due to the huge distance between Earth and Mars. We haven't yet figured out how to do this. My gut feeling is that it can be done if we are able to access and reprogram the Mobile App itself, or else write our own mobile app (which should be possible since the Rover is simply run by an Arduino), but we haven't had time to look into either option yet.Oh, also, I apparently got confused when I was looking at all the rovers I was trying to decide between, and I thought this one came with the infrared line tracking and collision avoidance sensors, but it DOES NOT. You have to buy those separately, so beware if, like myself, you're trying to decide between a dozen different Rovers and everything that each offers starts to blur together. If I'd noticed that, I probably would have gone with a different model with a better price point that already included those extra sensors. Hey, maybe other models aren't so confusing because they come with instructions and support/software in English?Overall, I'm getting this to work for my very baseline purpose - mostly... So I'm giving 3 stars. But it wasn't nearly as easy as I had it in my head that is should be due to the poor instructions and language barriers. And if/when my daughter and I ever manage to do the manual, though Graphical, coding to program the rover to do specific things, maybe I'll update my review to say how that went. Oh, I also hope I can figure out how to slow it down because it's hard to navigate very well with how fast it goes. If I can't figure that out - or it can't be done - I might drop this to two stars because it will be very difficult to actually use this for my purpose of having kids navigate it around obstacles. Right now, I fear they're just going to run over everything because it goes too quickly to have the reaction time to make a correction - even without the artificial earth-mars delay...

The media could not be loaded. This is my second time purchase from Xiao R Tech. This robot car kit set included everything I need to build up my DIY car. This very easy to build in most of the part, but it took me little bit time to assembly two servos near camera. It come with UNO, but if you are familiar with raspberry pi that will be also work on the board. All program are pre-installed, after I build up all component and I can play with it right away. The wifi car can be control either by smartphone with app or by computer software. The CD which comes with the package provide a lot material, circuit schematics, basic UNO program code, Arduino learning material, and wifi car assembly tutorial(not english subtitle). Later on, I found out they have website which provide most recently updated material which is much better than CD's material. Very satisfied with this quality product and study website they provide to me. I hope can really learn Arduino development very quickly with this kit. Really happy with purchase.

Doesn't have all the parts

Instructions are minimal. I had a hard time getting the mobile app installed on my android. It does not tell you , but you need to plug phone into computer then copy and paste to your phone the app from the disk they send . Worked good after that.

This robot is great. It took a while to get it working but once it did, it was amazing. I used the iOS app to control the car. The car has decent speed and works ok on carpet. The car took about 30 minutes to put together and was farely simple with the provided instructions and a video online. The camera included with the robot makes controlling it very easy since you can see where you are driving. Overall, with all the features this robot has such as like following, programmability, infrared sensors, and the ability to just drive it, I think this is a great robot and it is very fun to play with.