Review on 🔌 ELEGOO UNO Project Super Starter Kit with Tutorial and UNO R3 - Compatible with Arduino IDE by Matthew Gonzales

Updated May 2020: To finally get to the later tutorials I am reducing my rating to 1 star. The documentation for later lessons is imperfect, terms, symbols, and concepts are introduced without explanation, and the sketch code for these lessons is poorly commented. Both the DC motor and the relays included in the kit were not working reliably and it looks like some of the breadboard rails are defective. Elegoo never contacted me. Updated June 2019 (almost 3 months after purchase): I'm reducing my rating to 3 stars because 2 components failed after a short period of use. After the first one failed, I wrote to Elegoo (1.25 months ago) but didn't get any contact from them. First Review: I'm a complete novice when it comes to electronics and programming, so I had high hopes for this pack. I went through the first few tutorials and was pleasantly surprised at how easy the manual is to read. in English. The CD has a manual, code, and libraries in multiple languages, so the quality of their translations is unknown to me. Each chapter contains a description of what is being done, along with details of the equipment featured, as well as diagrams and photos showing how everything should be connected. After some study you can start making a connection between the diagram and the actual components, so I would definitely recommend this for beginners. I took off a star for things that some people consider minor issues: 1) Once you start unpacking the components from the box, it's almost impossible to put everything back together for them to close. You'll have to leave the box open at your workbench or find some other way to keep all the components from moving back and forth. Either that, or you better become a Tetris master! 2) All resistors look the same regardless of wattage, except for the standard color bars that appear on all resistors. Each color is explained in the manual with a great diagram to help decipher them, but it's hard to tell the difference between red, orange, brown and gold on the resistors themselves. Better take a good light and a magnifying glass with you! 3) After the first few lessons, the instruction stopped explaining the new features introduced in the sketches (program code). Since learning to write sketches is critical to learning how to use the Arduino, I feel this is a big gap in documentation consistency. One of the best places to find this information is of course the Arduino community help section, but even then you have to think about using arrays (for example). Overall this is a great set, with a few minor tweaks that I would like to see give it a full five stars. If you don't mind putting a little effort into decoding the programs and have some patience (which you'll need while working through the stuff anyway), you can't go wrong with this kit.