XiaoR Geek Raspberry Pi AI Robot Kit with Rplidar A1 Radar ROS SLAM Smart Car DIY Tank Robotics Kit Build Maps, Autonomous Navigation, Object Recognition Tracking, Following (Blue)

The summary of the full review: Don't waste you money on this. It doesn't work, tech support is poor and makes accusations, and the seller doesn't respond when you tell them parts came in the box broken.Let's start with what is my fault. The boxes this unit came in where disposed of, so I am unable to send it back for a refund, which I would absolutely do. I did not do it myself, but it was done, so that is still my fault.I would not purchase one of these again, and if this is any indication of the products by the manufacturer, I wouldn't purchase any of their products at all.It showed up, in the box with no damage, yet one of the major acrylic pieces was damaged (broken completely off). I contacted the seller, and no response. In all of my communications with the manufacturer, I informed them that it came with a broken piece. They won't even acknowledge that. I ended up using SuperGlue to apply liberally (since it is acrylic as well) to put it back together. It's not pretty, but it seems stable.I followed the instructions to the letter to assemble the unit. There are several steps that seem to be in the wrong order (making it overly difficult to assemble), but I was able to get it fully assembled. Most of the rest of the manual is just a portion of the ROS help wiki in print form. There is nothing valuable or helpful. In fact, some of the commands to troubleshoot (like running the turtlesim), don't even exist in the version of ROS this unit runs.This unit does not function. It is just a paperweight at this point. I was unable to connect to the unit following the instructions. In fact, the SSID is states to look for it no where to be found. (I am a Systems/Network engineer that is well versed in Linux, so I have a clue about all of the underpinning technologies). Eventually I hooked up a Keyboard and Mouse, and plugged in a network cable. I setup SSH and accessed this unit that way. hostapd was not running. It was not even set to start automatically. That is sort of the most important service for running this unit in AP mode, which is what allows you to connect to it in the first place. But, in the image they sent, it is not configured. So I fixed that.One I was able to get it working in AP, I attempted to connect using the APP. (That is a whole different story). It would not connect. As I researched more about ROS (Robot Operating System), there is a service that needs to be running called roscore. Well, it isn't setup to be started automatically. There is not service setup for it, there is nothing in any of the startup scripts to launch it. It is just inert. So I fixed that too. (I just manually started it in the foreground or the background with &.. same result either way).After getting those two items fixed, I was able to connect with it (in between app crashes and timeouts). Once I connected, I went to the control screens to do the next steps in the instructions... and... NOTHING. It does nothing. It doesn't move, it doesn't spin up a lidar image, it doesn't access the camera. It is just a paperweight. An inert chunk of components sitting there. I spent a week troubleshooting things and no matter what I tried, It did not work, so I reached out to support.They sent me a "NEW" firmware for it. I flashed it, and ... same exact issue. In fact, it is the same exact build that the original flash memory card had on it. There was no difference. So everything was still broken. They never once gave me a single suggestion to fix anything. After several back and forth emails where I described what I had done to troubleshoot, and given them all of the information I thought would be useful, they came back with an accusation.Here is what they said: "We reviewed your problem and found that you did not follow the steps step by step."Uhm... Really?So I fired back detailing that this is not, in fact, the case. Their product does not work. Now we are going to do a web meeting so they can "train" me how to use the product. I've flashed it back to default, and I will let them answer why it doesn't work when the services aren't running (it is their image after all and is in the condition the unit was shipped in with no modifications from me now).If I had the boxes, I would have sent this hunk of crap back. Even if it worked, it is in no way worth over $400. It is maybe $180 worth of parts, so a realistic price would be around $250. It is a dirt cheap usb camera, a low end lidar unit, and a Raspberry Pi 4 - 2gb unit with a 16gb micro-sd card, a motor control board, motors, a 3.5" screen, and the unit itself. Since it doesn't even work, they clearly didn't put much development time into it. Looks like they just installed ROS Kinetic (An End of Life version of ROS as of May 2021), a few modules the are supposed to support the motor board, camera, and lidar, but did no testing what-so-ever.Don't waste your time, energy, effort, and especially your money on this product, or likely any product from Xiaor Geek. If this is this non-functional, I'm betting their other products are not tested either and are just as non-functional as this unit is.***UPDATE***:I've "worked" with technical support. I still don't have a working unit. After being accused of not following directions, I was able to show that YES, I did. The directions are missing important steps. So even if you follow them perfectly, you will end up with an inert pile of parts.The gentleman on the other end was very nice, very polite, but we had a significant language barrier. We didn't accomplish much of anything except to show areas where the instructions are lacking. He was supposed to send me some instructions to re-flash the STM32 microcontroller. That didn't happen right away. (It talked to him during his Friday Morning. I expected to get the instructions that day. That did not happen. )I had to prod support again. When they did send them, they sent a link that was secured on a private google drive, so I could not access them. Finally, several days of wasted time later, they applied the correct rights and I was able to download the package and complete the procedure. (Mind you, it was a single step every day. So we are several wasted days in here for 1 troubleshooting step). When I told them it made no difference, the unit still does not function, they sent me a message about the jumper I had to move to flash the firmware on the MCU. Needless to say, I had already put the jumper back in the correct position. This wasted another 24 hours of troubleshooting time. (Tonight, Thursday, is their Friday, so they don't respond during the weekend.)Long story short - it still doesn't work. The unit is assembled per the instructions, including all of the missing steps now. They sent a nice long email detailing what they were going to do in order to avoid this type of issue in the future. Meanwhile I am still left with a non-functioning pile of parts.I continue to work with support in an effort to get a working unit for as much as I paid for it, but I still have a non-functional unit through no fault of my own. At the rate we are currently going, it could be weeks or a month before we get a functioning unit. I don't have a great deal of hope at this point in the "journey." I fear I will end up with the most expensive 2GB Raspberry PI.

Strong potential. Poor execution. The software was not programmed properly for pi4.