DFRobot Spider Robot Frame Kit

I bought two of these and put them together so the left set of legs was driven by one motor and the right set of legs was driven by the other. Add a microcontroller and tank steering and you've got a great little rc walker.

Very good assembly manual. Parts snap together easily and surprisingly it makes a very sturdy little spider. Well worth you time and money.

I bought this for my 8 year old as an early Christmas gift. It was easy to assemble and does everything I expected it to. This is a kid friendly product and my son was able to build a good portion of it himself. I would recommend this kit to anyone who has children interested in building robots.

I bought two of these for a robotics class I'm teaching. While the students had a good time assembling them, the instructions for attaching the wires (make a loop and attach it to the spring) results in a very loose connection. In fact, the robot did not start to move at all with this connection. I straightened the wires, and put the wire in between the coils of the springs, and one of the robots worked that way. However, the robot moved very slowly, and the students were disappointed (this might be because the wire from the battery to the motor still isn't connected well). I'm going to use a multimeter to verify the other one doesn't have issues with the motor before I try soldering the connections. The datasheet is particularly unhelpful (the pdf link above). It states that the robot comes with a 1.2 volt battery, but ours did not come with a battery, and needed a AA battery to run (which is fine if you're using it at home and have a drawer of batteries, but not so helpful if you're away from home). Also, when the kids were trying to adjust their models from a short stride to a longer stride, they had trouble getting the joints apart (not wanting to break them). It would be great if there were instructions for upgrading the robots, too, but for the price, it's still a fun project for the kids to work on.

As the facilitator of the SMS Robotics Club, I was searching for a good robotics kit for the students to enjoy building together. RobotShop.com was the first website on the Google search and the Spider Robot Kit was one of the first kits I noticed. Further reading and research showed that if you bought two (2) kits they could be assembled such that together they create one giant robot. The kits can be upgraded via electronic control boards to be programmed for autonomous movement and wireless control among other things. SMS Robotics is looking forward to our 1st build. Thanks RobotShop !