Price: $55.99
(as of Feb 03,2025 08:15:39 UTC – Details)
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Top reviews from the United States
Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2021
Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2020
I've messed with a lot of Arduino kits over the years, but this one has jumped to the top of my list. The instructions were great. Everything went through the first time. I REALLY like that they go through and teach you how the sensors work before they tell you to put the kit together. Then at the end you put it all together.
I downloaded the android app. It took me a few mins to wrap my head around it, but you can open and close the doors and read sensor values and all sorts of cool stuff with it. The big wooden gears are also a nice touch. All the parts are laser engraved to make assembly a breeze. The house part took me an hour and 15 mins to do casually while watching youtube, but the manual has enough in it to keep you busy for a week.
Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2023
Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2020
Top reviews from other countries
Oprogramowanie zawiera wirus VirTool:MSIL/CryptInject
Reviewed in Poland on July 17, 2022
Reviewed in Poland on July 17, 2022
Ogólnie fajna zabawka i świetny sposób aby poćwiczyć Arduino. Jednak mój entuzjazm zmalał po wykryciu wspomnianego niechcianego skryptu
Great time – nearly perfect for kit-building enthusiasts
Reviewed in Canada on September 11, 2020
Reviewed in Canada on September 11, 2020
4.8 stars, but I rounded up. I thoroughly enjoyed myself with this, but if you're making it with a kid, be prepared for quite a bit of head-scratching. Also, it is great for experimenting but most certainly not a complete "Learn to Code" kit (though honestly what is?)
My full, exhaustive review is below. Note that I am coming from my perspective here as a 20-something dude that likes robots, wooden model kits, and Arduinos. Your mileage will almost certainly vary, and I would assume that a "Regular Joe" would give this a 3.5-4/10 and a "Parent/Grandparent + Kid Hobby Tag Team" would likely give it a 4.5ish but maybe 4 for the money and the finagling. Though it's by no means a bad deal; there's a lot here and the box is full of goodies. Again, I thoroughly enjoyed myself with this.
For starters, this kit arrived quickly, was packed exceptionally well, and was a ton of fun to put together.
You get a bunch of little bags of components/parts/nuts/screws and stuff. Everything small is even labelled, it's attention to detail you rarely see.
The whole thing is powered by a Keyestudio PLUS Controller Board, which is basically an Arduino Uno on steroids, with USB-C and cool enhancements like that.
You get a sensor shield for it, as well as a beavy of sensors and stuff. Buttons, a relay, two LEDs (one white, one yellow), a soil hygrometer, a moisture sensor, a photodiode, a fan module (with a built-in L9110 motor controller, a little DC motor, and a plastic fan and nosecone; good stuff), a gas sensor (honestly dunno why), two servos, and a buzzer.
There's a few wooden boards with laser-cut parts for the house itself. Some are parts of the house itself, others punch out. Gears and fasteners and stuff. Smells good, but maybe I just get nostalgia from the smell of wooden kit parts because my grandpa and I used to build so many of them together. ☺️
The instructions basically tell you to go to the Keyestudio wiki, which has its own big page for this kit. It's somewhat tricky to read/comprehend, but if you take your time and follow along step by step you should be able to figure it out, given enough time and a bit of head-scratching. But hey, use it or lose it, right?
The app used to control everything is frankly a bit of a buggy mess, but that's mostly the fault of the fact that it's using a Bluetooth module and an Arduino-compatible board. I know from experience that you can only do so much with that setup, communicating with plain text. That's why I bought a Pi Zero W honestly; Arduino + Bluetooth is cool but not as cool as it could be or sounds like it is.
Anyway, the instructions also have a dozen-odd projects to do before building the house. Mostly hello world stuff with some of the major components.
Good stuff, and an Arduino hackers' dream really. Most of the stuff will probably go over your head or be kinda weird the way it's explained unless you've done this stuff before. It ain't a catwalk for an absolute beginner, but if you know a thing or two about Arduino, electronics, programming, etc. you can figure it out.
Rarely did I stop in ten process of going through the projects/build and think "Wait, I don't know what I'm doing here" though there were a couple times.
I was running through it all pretty quickly, and it took about 5.5 ish hours for the unpacking, setup, projects, building, etc. Unless you have a ton of patience or are going through Arduino withdrawal (guess which one describes me) you're not finishing this in one sitting. But that's good, really.
It'd make a great project for a kid and adult/older sibling to walk through together over the course of a week or two, a little bit at a time so you don't overload their brains or go beyond their attention span. It any kid who loves coding, hacking, building, crafting, robots, and/or kits like these would have to be in a pretty bad mood to not at least get a kick outta this. It's like a major upgrade to those build-it models you might see at your local dollar store (Needless to say, the kind of stuff I was raised on).
Overall, yes there are a lot of little things that bring it down. Yes it's a challenge to put together, and not always a good challenge. There are some downright tiny parts, but at least there are a few extras of some components. Some steps require quite a bit of precision (like putting a gear on a servo; I honestly can't say I enjoy that bit) and some things would probably break on you pretty easily.
The wiring of the whole house is frankly nothing short of a mess. But honestly what is to be expected when there is just that much going on?
The big 6xAA (it needs the voltage, but I'm sure it'd last quite a while on good batteries; I just powered it from my laptop personally) battery pack can power the main board, or you can use the provided USB-C cable.
The "final product" is a bit underwhelming in some aspects. Like, why is there a random soil hygrometer sticking out of the roof? I guess to check the water level of a nearby houseplant? But you'd have to figure out an uninterruptible power supply to make it worth it.
Why is there a gas detector? Like really? The instructions say it can detect "flammable/hazardous gas" well OK but I'd rather not rely on a glorified bird house to tell me that there's dangerous fumes in the air, thank you very much. Also, there's like a password on the door that uses the buttons on the front of the house, but I couldn't get it to work properly. And why is there just a random relay on the side that goes "Click click click" when you trigger it but it isn't attached to anything else? 😅
You'll probably notice the two squares of foam tape on the roof of my house. That is because I have up on the roof, and also because you need to take the roof off in the current state of this thing to reach the Bluetooth module so you can unplug it while uploading new code… Yeah…
The app again is really quite a mess, but honestly you could use any app that communicates over Bluetooth 4.0 and plain text (ASCII? I dunno) and there are some good ones out there. You just need to get the right letters to send to then board.
Overall, if you're looking for something easy to help your child/friend/loved one learn to code, hate to say it but this ain't it, chief.
It advertises being compatible with Scratch and Visual Programming, which is not a lie, since again, there's a glorified Arduino Uno in there.
But none of the code samples in the documentation are in Scratch. And the final big loop the whole thing runs off is nearly undocumented and comes out of nowhere at the end of the instructions. Sure, the other projects do give rather simple example programs for the components and decent explanations, but it's by no means a complete curriculum.
Honestly though it's Keyestudio, you really can't go wrong with their stuff. Their staff are generally pretty friendly and will get back to you if you have any questions promptly. Their stuff is top-notch as far as I'm concerned, at least at their budget-friendly price point.
Would I recommend this, and to whom would I? Yes, I would recommend this to someone with either a child or who knows a child that would be interested in it (not really for an adult to put together themselves. I had fun though, since I tend to see these types of things through rosy specs, but I digress). It's no learn-code-quick scheme or teaching aid necessarily, but it's a great time kicker rainy day type project that doesn't require much other than your time, concentration, and thumbs (popping out/pressing in wooden pieces, spinning nuts, holding stuff together, pressing down wire blocks, etc.)
Although I would probably rather recommend getting just the Keyestudio PLUS Controller Board, the Keyestudio Sensor Shield to go along with it, and a Keyestudio Sensor kit or something if what you want to do is just tinker or have parts for other projects. I honestly think that Keyestudio is basically one of the best brand names in the hobby microcontroller accessories market (Kuman and DFRobot are also very good IMO) so I do feel good about recommending their products over random knock-off potential trash.
Speaking of which, I'll probably be dismantling this house and cannabalizing it for its valuable Keyestudio parts once I've exhausted the list of things I want to do try to do with it (mostly custom programs using the sensors; the code it comes from is pretty good but I'd rather take a crack at it myself.)
Wouldn't buy another one, but the parts are high quality, and this made for a fun afternoon, so I'm happy with it. 😀
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