SunFounderRaspberry Pi Car DIY Robot Kit for Adults Picar-s,Visual Programming with Ultrasonic Sensor Light Following Module Line Following Module

This is a great product and the instructions to make it are straight forward. While I knew it required its own Raspberry Pi,, what was not clear was the type of batteries required. It is not standard AA or AAA. It requires two rechargeable type 18650 batteries. I found these on Amazon (after already getting the car) which has added 2 x$17 (per battery) and a $15 charger to the cost of the build. When you consider it also requires a Raspberry Pi, if you want to dedicate one to the car, this can be anywhere from $99 to $170, depending on where you buy it.This means a $45 robotic car has become in excess of A$200 to make and own.

The car is well produced from excellent components. It needed some time and effort to construct but it wasn't difficult ( but was too difficult for 8 year old to do on his own). The PDF manual is not as clear as it could be both re: construction and programming (especially if you don't have too much knowledge of Python). Once constructed, it needs connection to computer/terminal etc to be able to make it run but have now made it run in one of it's modes at startup which makes it more fun for the grandson. It is certainly giving me reason to build my coding skill with Python which is no bad thing. A more friendly manual would have made this a perfect project. This car is something for those who have had some previous experience of project building, not for beginners (there are too many questions to ponder).

Where to begin.....this is potentially awesome, requires some skill and patience in assembling thats for certain, my 15 year old super smart son is, as i type this, currently DIS-assembling the finished kit...why? Because its impossible to insert the HDMI cable into the raspberry Pi board as the front steering servo sits right in the way (bit of a design flaw there maybe?) It also requires 2 x 18650 batteries, I'd never even heard of these until today and after searching back on amazon i can find 100's of chargers, but not one single battery.....great

First thought, wow this sounds amazing. Oh, no instructions included. Okay, found an instructional Pdf so printed the 80 page instructions. Finally sit down and they are the wrong ones but didn't realise until the top peices looked different, it says picar-S all over the instructions and looked the part so.... I go back online and download an app called ManualsLib and turns out everything I had done so far is wrong. Start again. It better work after all this! I will update when or if done. Oh and all the parts are covered in paper so that was FUN!Update: with the instructions on the app we successfully built the car and it is ace.

The issue I ran into is that the plastic is thin and seems to deform. The wheels were cantilevered a bit. I'm not too concerned, but something other people may notice.One suggestion, the Pi is under the top shield. With the scarcity of Pis due to the pandemic, it would be nice to have the hat reversable so that the pi can be removed from the unit.