In our Moorebot Scout Robot Kit Review, we’ll break down this kit’s following metrics:
- Ease of Setup: How long does it take to “use” the kit out of the box?
- Instructions & Support: How easy is it to complete the kit, and if problems arise how easy is it get help?
- Educational Value: How much can you learn from completion of this kit?
- Fun & Engaging: Is the kit fun and engaging to use?
The Moorebot scout is a great attempt at a robotic kit aimed at multiple levels of learners. The kit itself comes with a fully assembled scout robot, a usb-c charging cable, a usb charging dock (the robot must be charged on the dock), and lubricant for the wheels (an odd addition). The robot features unique holonomic/omni wheels, allowing it to rotate in place. The scout user manual details all of the features, including:
- A novelty robot camera – Scout helps you to monitor your home from afar with no blind spots. The video robot follows pre-programmed path to patrol your house 24/7 and finds its way back to the charging dock.
- Fun and Entertaining – This smart robot camera works as a wireless camera for pets. Control the omnidirectional four-wheel drive from your smart phone and see your home in a totally different way. The bot can also track and follow humans and pets.
- Learn and Create – Use the Scratch Programming UI via the included app to unleash your creativity. Scout also serves as a robotic development platform for advanced programmers and robot enthusiasts.
- Smart Home – This home security robot supports voice control with Alexa, Google Home and SiRi. Stream video onto your Echo Show. Sensor triggered auto patrol.
- Privacy and Security – Privacy is ensured with a highly secured Peer-to-Peer protocol. This robot monitor only follows a pre-programmed path. No peeking, no wandering around.
- Innovative and Proven – Originated from a successful robotic project from crowdfunding, Scout is a proven product and delivered worldwide. Depending on who is using it, it’s a tool, it’s a toy, it’s educational and it’s fun.
Overall, this robotic platform is more of an expensive high tech robotic toy then a good learning tool. The robot offers multiple sensors that can make for an interesting platform, but the programming interface to control these directly is not well documented. The primary support is to control the robot using the scratch visual programming language, which makes this better suited to middle school / beginning robotic / programming students.
Ease of Setup
The Moorebot Scout arrives assembled, and requires approximately 10 hours to get moving using the mobile app. No extra batteries or tools are needed, which is a plus. The downside is that the app requires you to create an account to use the robot after downloading:
The app also exhibited some issues with establishing the initial connectivity to the robot. The robot features its own wifi access point to connect to in addition to connecting to existing access points. Once the mobile app is setup, it is intuitive and easy to use.
Instructions & Support
The instructions for the Moorebot Scout are available as an online manual. The manual features a getting started guide, as well as in depth explanations of the system.
The Moorebot leans heavily on its mobile app for setup, connectivity & control. There is no large online community due to the low volume of end users after its successful kickstarter campaign.
Educational Value
While instructions exist for using scratch to program the robot via the mobile app, there is not much support for programming the robot yourself using your programming language of choice.
Fun & Engagement
Once setup, you can drive this car around via the mobile app, taking photos or preprogramming patrol routes in the system. This novelty of treating the car as more of a manually controlled r/c car is fun, but not the point of using the kit as a robotic platform. The camera resolution also has room for improvement:
