littleBits 6-Mission Star Wars Droid Robot Kit
Last updated: August 9, 2022
This littleBits Star Wars Droid Inventor Kit has the feel of the films down pat, from R2's bleeps to the design of the user interface. Thanks to the magnetized, snap-together circuits, it's easy to build for most any age group. The droid itself has a minimum of pieces, but there are several missions on the app to amuse kids and teach them programming logic.
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Product Details
Key Takeaway: This littleBits Star Wars Droid Inventor Kit is easy to build and a joy to program.
In our analysis of 90 expert reviews, the littleBits 6-Mission Star Wars Droid Robot Kit placed 18th when we looked at the top 19 products in the category. For the full ranking, see below.Our Expert Consultant
Molly Thornberg
Technology and parenting blogger
Technology and parenting blogger
Molly Thornberg is a professional writer, creative and mom to four kids, living her best life outside of Dallas, Texas. With a love for all things tech, she is passionate about helping parents raise kids in the digital age. She writes about technology, parenting and humor on her blog Digital Mom Blog.
Expert Reviews
What reviewers liked
We appreciate the user interface, which captures the Star Wars aesthetic and manages to squeeze a lot of information into a small screen without looking crowded. It’s easy to navigate back and forth between mission steps or play back animations to ensure you know what you’re doing.
The droid is pretty simple to build; there aren't a lot of pieces, and they fit together well.
Once constructed, is a great toy that can focus young minds on basic programming, enhance hand-eye coordination, and ultimately entertain whoever is using it. Sure, the droid is only 12 inches tall instead of 36 inches, but the compact dimensions deliver a degree of portability that the movie version doesn’t have.
After he's up and running, he can be easily controlled with a smart device to take on block-based missions together, making sure the universe doesn't fall to the Dark Side.
We like this toy because of the way it’s specifically designed for Star Wars fans. Your kids learn to code, remotely control the droid using the app, and create custom builds by taking out and inserting new items.
You can simply download the app, select a mission, and get started. The app is one of the coolest I’ve ever seen with step by step visuals, videos, and animation that walks you through the process of building the droid, customizing the droid, and disassembling when you’re done. You also use the app to complete missions with either a joystick, tilt drive mode, and even voice recordings. It’s simple enough that even my 4-year-old could do it!
The actual littleBits bricks snap together thanks to built-in magnets, making it really simple to piece together a working creation. This removes any hurdles like soldering from the tinkering equation and effectively lowers the barrier of entry to just about anyone who can pick up the colorful miniature circuit boards.
What's nice is that the app will not allow you to proceed until you've completed each of the Base Assembly and Droid Training missions one at a time. This ensures that, kind of like a Jedi in training, you know your stuff before tackling bigger missions. This also breaking things down and makes learning circuitry much more accessible and easy to do.
- TTPM
Assembling the project is easy and the included mounting box makes it easy to lay out your circuit and connect to to power without worrying about pinched wires or short-circuits. Once your droid is assembled you follow a set of instructions on the mobile app to teach your robot to follow you, simulate force pushes, and other cute games.
We love that the resulting droid is transparent so you can see the electronics inside.
My son loves this Droid inventor kit and has been having a blast with it. He loves that the controls are Bluetooth (through the app) so he doesn’t have to be close to the droid to control it.As a mom, I love this kit because it is easy for my 10-year-old to do on his own (but also fun if you want to do it together). I like that the app walks him through it and he doesn’t have to constantly ask me for help. More importantly, it is fostering his love for STEM and encouraging him in his creativity. It is a high-quality product and I definitely recommend it.
The app allows the R2 unit to run in Drive Mode, Force Mode, Self-Nav, and a wide variety of other modes. The app also includes 16+ activities and missions “to keep kids playing day after day.” Like other LittleBits robots, this one’s only silent if you make it silent – the kit includes 20 “authentic” R2 Unit sounds straight from the Star Wars films.
It feels less like you are building a small electronics experiment and more like building a real, programmable invention. It was the overwhelming favorite kit of our second test panel, but it’s more fun than educational
littleBits provides an open source system of color-coded electronic building blocks that snap together using magnets — so you can't connect the wrong pieces — making it surprisingly easy for kids (and grown-up kids) to come up with their own inventions.
- Mashable
In place of a traditional instruction manual, the app begins with a series of training missions, the first several of which involve assembling the R2 Unit. Our son was quickly hooked. The missions start out slow, by identifying and assembling the internal components, but then ramp up to programming motion controls and decorating your bot.
- Fatherly
It’s all very cool and educational, but now littleBits has a kit that enables you to build a programmable, app-controlled R2-D2. If that doesn’t get kids’ creative juices flowing, they may as well all become accountants now and be done with it.
The kit lets you assemble the mechanical parts that allow the droid to wander around. More significantly, though, it includes a set of "bits," electronic building blocks that hook together according to the rules of Boolean logic to form the droid's custom brain, thus teaching the rules of computer circuitry and fooling kids of all ages into learning some pretty heavy electronic principles while they think they're just having fun.
- botDB
The tutorials presented via the app and its missions are very well done. The orientation of things is always considered, and at no time did my wife/daughter/grandson have to ask me for help. They just kept chugging along, mission by mission, part by part, until R2D2 was driving around the kitchen. I've built a lot of robot/RC kits over the years, and I'd rank this one as the easiest of all, and probably the most expandable of all beginner kits.
The equipment items are magnetized and slot collectively very simply, and the items are color-coded to assist children differentiate between varieties, like enter or output.
Easy for assembling with detailed in-app guide. Diversified game modes to play
By using the Droid Inventor app which is available for iPhone and Android your kids can teach their Droid brand new tricks and skills like navigation and head spins. You can also send your Droid on one off the 16 special Star Wars missions.
There are animations within the app that shows you every Bit and takes you through a step by step process towards building your droid. Each step represents a “mission”, which you are requested to accept. Generally, the droid is pretty easy to construct and all the pieces fit well together.
littleBits is helping kids learn with their easy to build products. They work to help teach STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math), and they’re launching a global inventor movement.
The whole bits system that littleBits products are based on are SO easy to use! I was so impressed with learning about how the pieces work together! My boys’ school has recently been doing a lot with teaching coding (in the form of block code) and the littleBits reminded me a lot of that. So, I think there will be some nice educational overlap there for my kids!
The littleBits Star Wars Droid Inventor Kit is easy enough to assemble without parental help.
What reviewers didn't like
Perhaps the greatest weakness to the design would be the wheels. Rolling on three skinny wheels, Artoo’s turns are quick but hard to control, and the front wheel tends to become misaligned. Sphero’s R2 unit, by contrast, has movie-accurate tracks that, while slower than wheels, make it much easier to handle carpets or uneven surfaces outside. littleBits’ R2 feels like much more of an indoor toy.
Initial instructions are slightly unclear. The quick start guide is a bit weird; the first instruction is to "Build this circuit," and shows a drawing of the circuit, with no helpful words. The second is to download the app (available for Android and iOS devices). But actually, you should download the app first, as it tells you how to build the circuit!
The biggest problem you’ll face is having fingers that are slightly too big.
Does not move well on thick carpet.
There aren’t a lot of missions included with the app.
One downside here is that while Swift Playgrounds support is said to exist, getting things configured no longer works thanks to a series of website 404 errors. Hopefully that gets fixed sooner than later.
If I had any complaints, it was that the kit requires a relatively current smartphone or tablet, and the hand-me-down iPads our kids have been using and abusing wouldn’t cut it. I had to install the app on my own phone, which admittedly, I’m never big on doing. Also, at least for the younger inventors, the kit does require some adult assistance as things can get a little complicated.
- Fatherly
The app is HUGE, and might take a while to download. Get that install started early.
The droid does include pre-made stickers so that you can add as soon as the items are put collectively, however this unpolished, DIY type could be a disappointment to some patrons in search of an ideal R2-D2 clone.
Block-based coding is preset programme, Not comprehensive enough for learning coding.
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