Freenove Ultimate Starter Kit for Raspberry Pi 5 4 B 3 B+ 400 Zero 2 W, 962-Page Detailed Tutorial, Python C Java Scratch Processing Code, 223 Items, 128 Projects (Raspberry Pi NOT Included)

I don't normally write reviews however I wanted to let everyone know about the experience I've had with this Ultimate Starter Kit for learning about how to do electrical engineering tasks with the Raspberry Pi. I'll break it down into several areas: Overall kit, Easy of Use, and Support Experience.The overall kit is a treasure trove of jumpers, motors, resistors, infrared sensor, digital display and a lot more. I've never seen so many items packed into a single kit and at such a great price point. If you want to see what you can do with the kit I highly suggest going to Freenove's website and see about downloading the PDF of the tutorial. Really see what you can do with this kit. Everything seen in the kit fits nicely in the supplied container. The container itself is multi-functional. It can be subdivided into 6 compartments with the supplied plastic dividers in case you want to separate your resistors from your capacitors. So even if you graduate to a larger container you can still use this one for other supplies. This is the only time I've actually been able to put everything back in a container after unpacking.The easy of use of the Ultimate Starter Kit cannot be overstated. The 400+ page tutorial manual is great. It steps you through how to build circuits from simple LED lighting to more complex items. The English in some areas is a little hard to understand but they are able to get their point across. All the technical information is spot on. I've gone from having no understanding of resistors and reading circuit diagrams to being able to put together a circuit by its diagram alone within the tutorials in less then a few days.Now we come to Freenove's customer support. You can really tell how a company cares about their product by the customer support experience. I am currently a manager of a support organization and know how support can make or break a customer's experience. I contacted Freenove's customer support when I couldn't get a tutorial circuit to work as expected, it was the Thermistor tutorial if you are interested. No matter what I did I just couldn't get it to function as designed. I took some pictures of the circuit on the breadboard and emailed them to support. I asked if they had any ideas that would tell me why it wasn't working. I wasn't expecting a response for a few days and would be surprised if they could actually figure out what I had done from the pictures. So you can imagine my shock when I checked my email the next day and I had a response. Based off my pictures they could tell I had used a capacitor instead of the thermistor. If you've never seen these components let me just say they are small, really small. The fact that they were able to see them at all really surprised me. So not only are they there if you have questions or issues with components, they are there to help you through the tutorials that they provide for the kit.Overall a really great experience with Freenove and I would certainly purchase again. I highly suggest picking up the kit if you are new to Raspberry PI and want to get into building circuits and learning what it can do. Excellent job all around.

This kit is awesome. Currently about to start a project on it. Comes with small form factor components and with the breadboard it really allows you to build items that may seem not so complex, but when scaled can be impressive. This is a great kit for all ages, but also great for kids.

I've had this kit for a while now and I guess I never really appreciated how good it was. The instructions are really good. They do a great job of explaining what everything does, how it all works and what the included code does. It's very comprehensive.

I'll start by saying I have a degree in computer systems engineering (basically a half-assed EE degree combined with a half-assed CS degree), so in theory I sort of know what I'm doing. I bought this kit as a refresher and to get a quick look at the recommended path to connect a Raspberry Pi to various components.Overall I liked this kit, but I'm not sure if I would have been able to get very far if I didn't have some experience working with computers and hardware. Perhaps a highly motivated beginner could get this on their own, and I certainly thing someone with a knowledgable guide would do just fine, but I wouldn't expect to just pick this up and figure things out. I don't think this would be a great gift for a 14-year old who is vaguely interested in computers and electronics unless they have a parent or friend who is going to work on it with them.You can download the project instructions for free. If you're considering buying this, I recommend you do that first. The link is in the product description. This should give you an idea of what you're in for.The code is written using some high-level C and Python libraries. This may or may not be what you're looking for. They're nice because they make it really easy to get things up and running. The downside is that they obscure what's actually going on. If you want to dive more deeply into how things work, there are tutorials online. At some point a lot of the code looks the same, because a lot of it is doing the same thing, over and over again: turning digital signals on and off. Not a big deal, just know there's some repetition.The supporting documentation is obviously written by a non-native english speaker, but it's fine and you should have no trouble following along (unless you're some jingoist who gets personally offended when non-native speakers use the wrong verb tense or leave out an article, in which case maybe go back to reading the electronics repair articles on NewsMax). The descriptions of the parts are basic, but they should give you enough information to get you started. The descriptions of the code are sometimes a little lacking, but in general you should be able to follow along if you already know how to program.The projects have both traditional electrical diagrams, as well as physical diagrams that show you the breadboard and exactly where to place wires and components. The latter are especially useful on more complicated circuits. My one complaint here is that some of the physical diagrams show wire colors that aren't included in the kit, so you end up using different colors, which can make it difficult to debug your circuit if something goes wrong.The parts included in the kit are good. Plenty of resistors, a few capacitors, lots of wires, and some fun stuff like motors and an LCD screen and a thermometer. You can see the full list of parts in the product description. It doesn't come with a chip extractor, so you might want to pick one of those up to make sure you don't bend the leads when removing chips from the breadboard. The kit arrives with components on the breadboard, so one of the first things you do is take them off.Overall this is a good kit for folks who are motivated and/or kind of know what they're doing. It's easier that ordering a bunch of stuff individually and then hoping you can find a library that supports it. Once you're done working through the projects you should know enough to move on to bigger things.