ELEGOO Toy Robot Penguin Bot Biped Kit

No complaints here, for the money it's a great kit, with good assembly instructions, that’s very easy to assemble. It comes pre-progammed straight out of the box with a very good Arduino Sketch that shows off its capabilities extremely well, great fun for kids and adults new to Arduino. It can be controlled on your phone via an Elegoo bluetooth app (which can be downloaded from either the Google or Apple app store). The Elegoo app allows you to access to several pre-programmed Arduino routines: 'Direction Control Mode' - Control the bot's basic functions via 5 button pad on via phone screen, such as moving foward, backwards, left and right. 'Music Mode' - Allows you to play several music samples pre-supplied on the SD card that comes with the kit (several sightly annoying short tracks, which you can thankfully change). 'Dance Mode' - The Penguin Bot performs a short fun dance routine to music, it has 3 dance moves / routines provided by default. 'Auto Follow Mode' - Place your hand or an object in front of the Bot and it will turn and follow it, if it doesn't detect and object within 20cm it'll stop moving. 'Obstacle Avoidance Mode' - Penguin Bot will walk forwards automatically until it encounters an obstacle within 20cm, at which point it will turn and choose an alternative path until it encounters another obstacle and so on. For those looking to be a little more adventrous, you can download all of the Penguin Bot’s Arduino files from Elegoo’s website. These include the main default Arduino sketch the Bot comes pre-loaded with (allowing for bluetooth control via the phones app etc). Along with several example files outlining its individual basic functions, such as movement, obstacle avoidance, play music and auto follow. My only minor gripe lies with the Arduino code itself, it's poorly documented in my opinion. The main Arduino sketch and indeed all of example Arduino sketches, are completely devoid of any form of helpful line comments you usually expect to find in well written code. This makes it unnecessarily difficult for a novice wishing to experiment or tinker with the Bot's existing code, to figure out exactly how the code works. Great kit and extremely good value for money !

Nice little project. Elegoo claim that the age group for this kit is 6 - 12 years. A bright 12 year old may be able to do this; but unless you have a child with a very high I.Q. I doubt it. Be warned; the nuts and bolts supplied are easily lost, so take care. Having said that, there are a couple of spares included. The phone app used to control this robot, is not the same as in the manual. The new (upgraded?) app is still very hit and miss, but it just about does the job. I would have given 5 stars if the app worked well.

Assembled this with an 8 year old, who did most of the assembly work except the calibration. He needed a small amount of help with the instructions. The recommended age on the box is 12+ and I reckon that at that age, grown up help is probably not going to be needed for this kit as it's simple enough to assemble and the parts connect together easily. The kit has clear instructions and makes a small robot that can be controlled using an app on a smartphone, or by creating custom commands. It's cute and plays music and can dance. The assembly involves connecting a relatively small amount of parts, servos and cables. The assembly is fairly rapid but there's more fun to be had out of the completed robot than with simpler kits.

Confusing information regarding suitable age for this product. Description states age range 6 - 12 years. This is also shown on the side of the box. However top of box shows age 12+ years. I will not be giving this to my 6 year old grandson for his present

The Penguin Bot came well packed and delivered before the date promised. It was relatively easy to assemble and well detailed with step by step details in the handbook that came with the product. The finished Bot worked well and we have had a great time getting it to dance and do all of the things specified. Well worth the money and an excellent way to introduce youngsers to electronics. We inadvertently did a very silly thing in damaging some of the parts after a few days of fun. I then tentatively asked Egeloo if i could purchase some items to repair the Bot damage we had inflicted however the after sales service has been the best experience i have ever had with a supplier and the parts were on the way almost immediatly. A more helpful company i have yet to meet. Buy one and have fun.

Nice item. Printed manual & App manual conflict on the build process. Battery life not great and battery life not specified.

The reason I give one star is because the build quality and instruction book are very bad. Here are some feedback points from a design engineer with 20 years experience: - a lot of assembly steps are not mentioned so I had to dismount several times because parts are not shown how to mount them (this is supposed to be a fun experience with my children and it was kind of lame) - many screws do not have access for the screwdriver - how am I gonna screw those self tapping screws? Because I tried and the tap is now inclined and the robot leg is inclined, is limping. However you turn those legs around there is no access to the screws. And disassembling them is not possible. Those things need to be mentioned in the guide at least. Also the fact that the ultrasonic sensor has to be pushed with such a big force in the clips that it almost breaks the board. Its obvious that people comment in here before even assembling this robot. Such a shame.

A bipedal robot that actually walks for this price point is just incredible. The fact its so cute and fun to play with too is a bonus. I would say for a child or a beginner this could be a little difficult to put together... That's no fault of the instructions, simply that because of what it is and its size it is a little fiddly to put together. However, that being said, ever part of it does go together well and I have to give applause to the clever physical design of it. Note that in some pictures you'll see it with a remote control. This is the V1 robot. The V2 which is what you will receive has Bluetooth and can be controlled in a similar fashion to the remote using an IOS or Android phone or tablet. Note that the V2 robot also includes some solid improvements in the design and how it goes together.