Greetings! My name is Darrell. I’m a big fan of building robot projects and a member of the local robotics club. I’ll be building the Spirit Rover kit that I backed on Kickstarter a couple of years ago (I know, that was awhile back. Too many robots, so little time to build). Anyway, I’ll be sharing my experience here and hope to hear from other makers/builders that have also built this kit.
Best of luck! I know it was quite a hassle putting it together due to all the small bits, but in the end it was really fun! For your own sanity please don’t try to assemble over carpet for fear of losing said small parts.
Hay Darrell,
How did you go with the build. I built Spirit a few years ago and found opportunity in the cupboard last night. Ill start the build today.
1 Like
Actually, I ended up shelving the project for awhile. I had difficulty with manipulating the very small parts and lost too many to the “Twilight Zone” called the carpet. Slowly finding some of the lost parts. I even use a magnet desk pad to sort parts out and (hopefully) prevent loss. But this project challenges even an iPhone repair job! LoLz 
How’s your robot 
build going?
1 Like
Hi @darrell24015, The build went well. I took some photos along the way. The total build time was just under 4 hours.
I did not think of taking photos until I completed the bottom:
The Top just before mounting the board:
Board on and a soldering stand to assist with the build. It was so helpfull:
Power on test before installing the wings and head:
Spirit and Opportunity together:
And the whole family! The kids have had a lot of fun over the last few years with Ringo and Wink, Now I can have some fun with the Spirit. I will be looking to first setup another Raspberry Pi with a PS4DS controller to see if I can control the robot over WiFi.
1 Like
Thanks for following up. I hope you like my post!
Got and built the Spirit a few years ago, but at the time Plum Geek had planned to provide guides on how to use the Raspberry Pi. He never got around to that. My kids and I did some of the fun using the Arduino, but had hoped to get into learning more about using Raspberry. For someone who’s never used Raspberry, any advice on how to get started?