Robobuddy Wireless Remote Control Vehicle, White

Ok I read all the reviews and took a chance. Before I go further I have to say that I am and engineer with a smart house, electronic training, a full shop, and was considering building a patrol robot from a developer platform or from scratch to video areas of my house not covered by fixed cameras and that I could operate remotely when I am out of town. To say I was skeptical of a under $100.00 robot is an understatement but a scratch project would take months and cost over $300.00 I was also in a hurry so I threw the dice. REALLY glad I did. Does this platform do everything as well as my $300.00 beheamoth would do? No, not quite, but its pretty darn close and it is CERTAINLY functional. The plusses first;1)good design of the rover,2)SUPERB customer service! (If you get in trouble, need parts, or have a tech issue, there IS an actual living human to help you at the other end of the phone call and they know what they are doing!)3)The GUI is very user friendly to use (setup not as much...more on that later) .4) The speed of the bot is perfect the robustness of the build is good to excellent and so far all the parts seem reliable. SPARE PARTS ARE AVAILABE if something breaks ( I found this out the hard way due to my housekeeper) so you can actually maintain this critter...A HUGE PLUS if you intend use not as a toy but as a functional device!! 5) The design of the docking station is perfect! Any approach angle within 30 degrees of head on results in a solid dock and the GUI returns a charge indicator so you know you are docked and charging.6) The infrared vision is good and the transmitted picture quality is good even on lower resolutions ( VERY good at 800 mbps its highest setting)7) It can navigate any terrain that does not tip it over that is to say it will drive over the toe of your shoe with one track and be fine. Anything taller would be a problem for a bot this size but it has the power to do the job. Now for the negatives. First let me say that most are associated with the bandwidth required to operate as we would all like....smooth instant response and great video / sound. When my internet provider is not throttling this bot , to my delight, nearly achieves perfection. I have driven it from a movie theatre, a restaurant and a parking lot 10 miles from home and got either instant response or some small lag time where you drive in steps of about a foot every second to compensate for the lag to avoid smashing into a wall. (the video lags behind motion so you can drive into a wall before you see it on the video and then watch helplessly as the truth is revealed live on streaming video as it updates)I have yet to slam into anything remotely but I doubt it would do harm to bot or wall. Still, my best advice is practice makes perfect. If the internet connection is slow you are essentially driving a mars rover; you send a command and wait a second or two for refresh and update. Again takes practice and slows you down but this is an issue with your ISP NOT this robot!The only design upgrade faults I found are:1) The GUI still needs some user friendliness stirred into the mix for the setup and configuration portion. I solved my issues mostly by goofing around and with two brief calls to tech service.2) The battery is a nickel metal hydride multi cell and does not have a long duty cycle. I do not leave it on charge for more than 5 hours (it will fully charge in 1 hour or less) and while I leave the bot on the docking station I back it up an inch to turn off the charge indicator after it charges. Memory is possible but can be reversed by completely discharging and then fully recharging the cells a couple times. I would like to see the battery upgraded to a lithium IRON (LI FE) battery with a suitable BMS upgrade (battery management system). That cell has more power potential, is NOT the type of lithium that can go into thermal runaway (catch fire) and is a great battery. but that is a suggestion for the next gen of this bot because it WOULD add cost. I can run remotely for 30 to 45 minutes or stay in one place with the video on for several hours on one charge. It also lets you know when its running low and usually has enough juice to re-dock before dying. I have yet to strand it remotely but I've only had it a few days. It would be great if the system would allow you to park it at all times on the dock on a sleep mode and with the bms turning off at full charge state so you can wake it up remotely at any time and have the battery fully ready to support long duty cycles.3) The antenna is a weak spot of sorts. Its a good antenna but the coax cable going to it inside the bot is too short. This is only an issue if you mess up or the bot has an unfortunate accident (personal experience talking here) My housekeeper put the bot up on a table facing the same blinds I park it in front of. Thus the picture looked the same as it being on the floor. I was testing remote operation from the bedroom and drove it off the dock. I heard a loud crash....never a good sign... I came out to see the bot had fallen 3 feet to a tile floor,antenna first. The good news is that this is a rugged bot and was mostly unharmed. the antenna is also well designed with a snap on hinge and it simply snapped off without structural damage. The bad news...the coax inside the antenna was not long enough to allow for the flexion forceful removal of the antenna imparted and the wire was pulled apart. It looks like 28 or 30 awg mini coax and has no tensile strength. I opened the bot and luckily I have 28 awg coax in my shop so I simply repaired the break and the bot works fine but I ordered a replacement antenna anyway to fix it properly. YES they have replacement parts and the bot is easy to work on if you happen to be a proficient technician!4) The speaker and the voice output is the weakest feature. The volume on my unit is LOW LOW LOW> not an issue for my application but if you want to speak to the kids or carry on a remote presence conversation, the room has to be quiet as a morgue to hear the thing. Again for a $100.00 bot this is not suprising but a bigger speaker or a better amplifier would correct this issue. A minor complaint about an otherwise satisfying purchase!Anyway I will update as to the antenna replacement and how the bot continues to work but for now I HIGHLY recommend this device as a toy OR as a working unit for home and business!

Hmmmm ....where do you start with poorly designed stuff?I suspect anyone that has given 5 stars either sells these or only had it for a few days.I received my mine, it too had been opened previously.Oh well, tryed it anyway and got it to work a little bit.Never got it to work remotely, meaning unless your phone and the unit we're on the same wifi network then "No Go".After a little bit of use the unit wanted to continue to go to the right, so if you wanted to keep going in circles you might get a little more use out of it.Concept is great, implementation has lot to be desired.Software only has 2 1/2 or 3 star rating.Learned a lesson on this one, before you buy any of this type of product, find out what app it runs on and check the rating.It would be a good indicator of how well you can expect it to work.In short, KEEP LOOKING.

I really really wanted this to work. I couldn't get to work with my Galaxy S10e so I tried with a friend's Galaxy S7 and it worked like a champ. I contacted the company's tech help, which was very helpful, explained the problems I was having and after a few attempts they told me that my Android pie was most likely to new for this product's app and that there was no updates in development. So, bottom line if your on an older version of Android with no plans on updating then this robot camera is great! If the company would update it it could be great for the rest of us.

I've had RoboBuddy for about a month and I purchased it on sale for $50 so my expectations are based off of that.Pros:Build is solid. The drone is large enough to push semi closed doors open so I'm able to explore most of my apartment without issue. It can climb over rugs and carpets. Shoes and sandals are immovable. Connection works optimally over local wifi at a high video bitrate; however, you can still get decent response/feedback over 4G if you lower the video quality and disable the two-way audio. View angle/range is very good. Infrared works perfectly, as I was able to chase and record video/pictures of my kitty in no light (picture included). Microphone has good sensitivity. Speaking of recorded video/pictures, the Gallery app on my android phone wasn't able to find the stored location. I had to use a file explorer to locate the files. If you're not as technically savvy, you might have difficulty in doing so. Battery life is excellent and the docking station doubles as a charging pad so you could keep RoboBuddy running indefinitely as long as you dock it when the battery runs low. An icon in the mobile app shows battery life. RoboBuddy goes into sleep mode/standby when you're not connected via the app so the "50 minutes" battery life refers to 50 minutes of continual use with no payload. RoboBuddy has a storage compartment and it advertised as an 8oz payload. I've driven a 12oz can of soda without putting that much strain on the motor; however, I wouldn't try anything heavier.Cons:The mobile application. The initial setup wasn't intuitive without the instruction manual and might be a little confusing for some. As previously mentioned, finding your media files is difficult outside of the app and no thumbnail preview is giving within the app. The interface could be cleaned up (e.g. move "security setup" off the home screen and into a settings menu, automatic switching between streaming profiles based off of LAN/4G/wifi, saving the adjusted turn sensitivity, adjust sound quality, etc.) but it's functional and works well enough for now.Conclusion:The speaker on RoboBuddy is loud enough for me to issue voice commands to my Amazon Echo. This in turn allows me to control the AC unit, lighting, and music in my apartment when I'm away on work/travel (as well as harass the cat) so I've found a lot of utility with this "toy". It's definitely more for nerds since it requires some technical skill to get everything running smoothly but the payoff is worth it.

Sometimes the robot works when I am using it over the internet. Sometimes it loses out on the connection and times out. So far it has been reliable and does provide a good quality feedback through the camera system. My only complaints is the lag it suffers from when being remote controlled.