Adeept Mars Rover PiCar-B Smart Robot Car Kit for Raspberry Pi 4 3 Model B+ B, Speech Recognition, OpenCV, Real-time Video Transmission, STEM Educational Robot with PDF

Build it with my 8yo son in about 2 hours, he was very happy about it and with the result. Now he is testing different codes for the openCV and the obstacle avoidance to prepare the kit for a contest. He is very very happy with it. Works great and runs very well. Tested with a Raspberry Pi 4B 4GB. Not included: the Raspberry Pi board and 18650 batteries. This advanced kit is by far the best I worked with, in this price range: - great build quality - great accessories included - all parts fits perfectly - PDF and online video (also youtube) with full details for the assembly - the Motor HAT is great and fully functional - all the motors and sensors included - Raspberry Pi Camera included - all cables needed included - the wheels are great - all the necessary codes available on Adeept site, fully working - all the tools necessary for the assembly available in the box - the openCV code works fine - the obstacle avoidance code (with the ultrasonic) works fine - BIG PLUS: it has extra room for more connected accessories (motors, sensors) and the kit could be improved for any specific need. We highly recommend this kit! It has some really cool features and can be used both inside and outside.

I built the Mars Rover PiCar-B and the problem is that the sensor head (the big head with the Ultrasound and camera) starts to rattle around as soon as it moves, only holding it or moving to the end of the servo movement stops it. It's like the servos can't hold it in position, it also makes the impression it is not very stable on top on that one tiny servo, which seems to be overwhelmed with it. I've now bought myself upgraded servos, or better said "suitable servos". The servos in the box seem to be either fake Tower Pro, or absolutely overwhelmed with this robot car. I've tested the servos with a servo tester, one was already broken and probably caused more pain for the other one in the head. If I wouldn't love to build those things, I would be super angry about such a low quality, or let's say unfit for purpose part in this kit, because I had a lot more hours to make it work! The new servos are from the same manufacturer "Tower Pro" but the model is the MG90D, with a lot more power, metal gear and digital, so very precise. I paid £7 per servo, so that was an extra £21, but now I can have a calm mind and work properly with this robot car. If other models are equipped with the same low quality, I would think twice before I buy, and if only with a discount so I can pay for the other servos. Hope this helps others!

If you’re expecting to receive this and have all clear instructions and an easy set up guide with everything working quickly and easily… this is not the kit for you. I know it’s not much to ask for in this day and age, even for a cheap kit but I would recommend it still. I’m an engineer and it gave me a few head scratching moments but someone with patience will get through it. Read some Q&A when you get stuck, the end result is good. I had a couple of broken bits of plastic but was easy to fix. The one that surprised me was all three servos supplied where all faulty. I didn’t even think to check them before installing them and once I tried a test program, thought I must be doing something wrong. I had a servo tester and sure enough, all three not working. Either not moving, moving very slowly with no power or jittering over to one side. I bought a pack of SG90 servos (the size used for this kit) and tested them first before installing, then all good. Installation instructions and software setup instructions are on the adeept.com website. I found using a combination of using the V1 and V2 instructions to build it as although they not 100% the same, they are close enough and between the two instructions to work out what to do. When it comes to the software for the raspberry pi (which you need to supply) one set says to install the latest version of raspbian but the adeept software hasn’t been updated for the way the camera system is handled in the new version. You need to install raspbian 2021-5-07 for the software to work with the car correctly. That said, once it’s done, it is very good and works well, great for plenty of AI and robotic experiments.

I am buying it for some machine learning applications. There are many pi rovers for home projects. However, this is one of the best made and documented products at this price range. I spent one evening assembling all parts and ran several tests. All components worked for the first time. I had great fun while doing it. The product does not come with a manual. However, you can simply google the "adeept mars rover-b" and find the PDF version. Remember to use *the 2nd version* of the manual which fixed many typos in the 1st version. The document is reasonably well-written and in hindsight, many of my problems could have been avoided if I had followed the manual at the beginning. I would also recommend connecting all motors/LEDs to the control board to have a "dry run" before the full assembly, which saves you the trouble of disassembling later. The structure is also very robust. My pi-car fell off from my desktop (75cm) and only one servo motor suffered slight damage (which is then fixed using the provided spare motor).

Was looking forward to this as a present to my son. The instructions contain spelling mistakes, incorrect diagrams/pictures and broken links. The kit parts do not match the instructions and the YouTube instructions video is miss out building steps/parts - deliberately I suspect. All round disappointing purchase. Avoid adeept products in the future and at all cost!

The reason I chose this robot car kit is because I wanted something that was more than a remote control toy: 1. Programming in a higher level language (Python) 2. All software publicly available (open sourced on github) 3. Plenty of computing power (I used Raspberry Pi 4 8gb) 4. Connectable to my home computers (extra processing power, eventually automatic remote control) 5. Lots of features built in (ultrasonic distance scanner, video camera, speech recognition, wifi, bluetooth, etc) 6. Extendable (might try getting scratch 3 or snap running) plus lots of raspberry pi ports & addons available 7. Excellent instructions - step by step explanations for assembly and use When assembling all parts are labelled. I suggest you get a large tray and install inside the tray so no small nuts get lost. I found it worked first time - turned power on, and from my phone I could go to the IP address of the car (on my home wifi) and control it directly. It probably isn't the right purchase for anyone who expects a toy car that does cute tricks. It is a great chance to learn all about programming and robotics (opencv in particular looks interesting to me, and here it is already explained and working).

Assembly is straightforward. Steering mechanism very crude. Insight into how electronics function and related programming is good if you can follow it. This is not an intelligent device and the movement and obstacle avoidance could be easily achieved without electronics and software. Imagine yourself in a strange, pitch black room and you walk forward until you bump into something. You can then decide to move left or right by some amount and advance again. Whilst you might learn from this interaction, the device cannot. Because the device has no way of knowing where it is it cannot find its way to any destination or retrace it's steps. Because it has no purpose, unlike a robot vacuum cleaner, it just moves around aimlessly. The fact it doesn't know where it is means you cannot program in any purpose for it to follow. You will soon get bored with the thing because it is as random as a rolling ball. Robot vacuum cleaners can count wheel rotation for distance and use data from the IMU to know where it is and where obstacles are. Any wheel slippage or drift and the robot is no longer where it thinks it is. This device cannot be adapted to do even this simple function.

Mars Rover Picar-B - It's an amazing kit. I have had need to contact support twice and they answered my emails within a few hours. Be aware it is not a snap together remote car that will do cute tricks. The kit itself is of high quality and took me an afternoon to put together. Look on the Adeept for the PDF tutorial on how to put it together and also the video on YouTube - consulting them side by side helped me to put it together no problems. There are batteries for it on Amazon and you of course do need a Raspberry Pi to make it work - the Raspberry Pi 4 with Buster works fine. Now I have it installed and working the fun starts. I will do basic stuff "out of the box" but the idea is to learn to program in Python to make it do load more stuff. If you are after a learning project. 100% recommend

El montaje es muy entretenido y esta muy bien explicado. Como cosa curiosa, hay piezas de sobra, tanto tornillos y tuercas como otras que se prevé que se pueden gastar o estropear más. Lo que es importante también es tener algo de conocimiento en programación python, cosa de la que yo carecía, pero me estoy poniendo las pilas. Todavía no he conseguido guiarlo con el mando y espero que en internet me puedan ayudar

This has allowed me to elevate the subject I teach and really test the kids knowledge of IT.

This is my second robotics kit from Adeept. And I really enjoyed assembling the PiCar-B. The tutorial is easy to follow and each step has some logic in it. That makes the process more intuitive. Not blind following the instructions, but active thinking. For example to add the connector lights, you must understand the technique behind it to assemble the wires correctly so everything fits in place. I want to mention one specific part of the process namely the placing of the pi-camera. The inventor used tiny nuts to prevent damage to the connector. The nuts are used to create a gap between the acryl plate and the printed circuit board. A really smart finding. The installation of the software was easy. After setting up the Raspberry Pi, it only requires to run an installation script. After that the PiCar-B could be control by a web based app. My nephew with the age of 5 had a lot of fun controlling/driving the PiCar. As a programmer, I liked the detailed pages in the tutorial about the libraries used to run this car with Python. Therefore this kit benefits a range of users with different ages and experiences. The following weeks I am going to find out how the line tracking sensor works from a technical part, and my nephew to control it by the app. For now I learned a lot. Keep up the good work Adeept!

Pregi: Kit interessante e ben confezionato, proposto al giusto prezzo (anche se il necessario Raspberry e' a parte e rappresenta una spesa non indifferente, specie se si sceglie, come e' consigliabile in caso si voglia successivamente lavorare sul software di bordo, un modello da 4 o 8 GB). Fornisce una piattaforma gia' ben attrezzata e che si presta a espansioni, aggiunte, modifiche. Documentazione curata, quasi senza errori e facilmente reperibile online. Montaggio non rapido ma, soprattutto prestando la dovuta attenzione a non perdere o mischiare le vitine, completabile in qualche ora. Difetti: Per caricare le batterie (due celle 18650 fornite) va usato un caricabatterie esterno (non fornito). Sarebbe stato piu' comodo prevedere una presa di ricarica a bordo del veicolo, ad esempio la classica USB. Non c'e' modo da software per conoscere il livello di carica delle batterie. Controllandolo da remoto e' quindi impossibile sapere quanta autonomia resta prima di perdere il collegamento. Il servo che gestisce la rotazione panoramica della "testa" puo' non avere spunto sufficiente per iniziare il movimento, soprattutto se si stringono troppo le viti del cuscinetto, ma anche allentandole non si ottiene grande vigore; il momento d'inerzia evidentemente e' un po' eccessivo e consiglierebbe un servo piu' robusto. La percezione degli ostacoli data dalla scansione ultrasuoni (con rotazione della "testa"), come mostrata dal grafico dell'interfaccia di controllo web, e' poco precisa: messo davanti al nulla puo' "vedere" ostacoli che non ci sono. I percorsi da far fare ai cablaggi (soprattutto quelli della "testa", con un delicato cavo piatto che rischia di rompersi presto per fatica) sono un po' lasciati alla fantasia di chi assembla il kit. La documentazione infatti si concentra sulle parti strutturali e non da' indicazioni su dove e come far passare i cavi.

Pièces de très bonne qualité, on se régale à l'assembler, mais quand arrive la mise en oeuvre... Je pense pouvoir dire que je suis assez bon dans ce qui touche au Raspberry pi, j'en ai 8 ou 9 qui servent à plein de trucs différents, donc aucun problème à trouver des solutions par moi-même. Ce kit n'est clairement pas fait pour les débutants comme dit dans l'annonce. Le soft est dépassé, pas mis à jour pour les dernières versions de Raspbian, donc problèmes de compatibilité incessants qui font que le service technique tente de trouver des solutions mais rien ne fonctionne correctement. J'ai testé 3 distributions différentes dont une assez ancienne de Buster sur leur conseil, avec à chaque fois des correctifs de fichiers à appliquer (setup.py, rc.local, version de websocket et autres) car aucun n'est compatible. Bref, si vous voulez bien vous prendre la tête, ça fait le job. J'aurais aimé qu'ils fournissent une image testée et fonctionnelle avec ce kit, c'est vraiment dommage quand on voit la qualité de construction et le détail des documents fournis sur leur site, mais celui-là est clairement dépassé et pas mis à jour. Par contre service technique super réactif et sympa. J'attends une de leur dernières réponses et je vais sûrement le renvoyer... monté, je ne vais pas le démonter en plus si ?