I purchased the Pidog kit from Sunfounder’s Amazon store. I was really excited to get it, and started building it right away after receiving it. I quickly ran into several issues however.
1. Compatibility
The product is advertised as being compatible with Pi5,Pi4, Pi3 etc… I owned one of each of those Pi’s (3B,4B and 5) and I had intended to eventually use the Pi5 as it is the most powerful of the three. While assembling the kit, I learn that there were TWO versions of the kit but since I just bought (July 20, 2025) it and was advertised as Pi5 compatible I assumed I had the latest one, and continued to build the kit. After getting it completed, I got on the forums and read more about this, I learn that I received a V1 kit (which is not compatible with Pi5)! Still not sure how one actually can buy a V2 kit, since you apparently cannot “upgrade“ a V1 to V2 since the robot-hat has been redesigned (See 2nd issue, below) and the V2 uses much better servos (ones that dont have to be ZEROED out). This was a real disappointment for me. I felt duped.
2. No Sound / Bad Speaker design
After spending several days trying to get the sound output working, it is still not happening. I have tried everything on the forum. I disassembled the Pidog, and found a possible reason the robot hat speaker (V1) is mounted on the underside of the board… in a really bad location (the speaker comes in contact with the heatsinks required for the Pi 3B/4B to operate within thermal norms). The recommendation is to REMOVE the heatsinks which is a really bad idea. Forgoing the removal of the heatsinks, I tried adding taller headers to put some space between the Pi and the Hat, but still no sound. I am without working sound output which obviously makes the entire kit nearly useless to me. I may have to replace the speaker with one that can be relocated to a better location on the pidog.
3. Jittery Head/Neck Servo
The Pidog’s neck servo has a real bad case of jitters, wherein it shakes constantly back and forth while at rest in the “home” position. It will stop if you gently place a finger on the nose or under the chin. But will start again after any head movement cycle that returns the head to the home position. This unwanted movement obviously will affect the quality of the video from the nose-mounted camera (blurry) and will produce spurious readings from the Ultrasonic sensors as they could be detecting two different objects while the head is bouncing back and forth.
Not sure where to go from here, I am pretty sure I cant return it, since its totally assembled now. I am really disappointed with the fact I was sent this V1 kit which isnt even Pi5 Compat. The additional issues are like adding insult to injury.
The sound issue may be just due to having the wrong default output set on your pi. Install alsa utils via “sudo apt-get install alsa-utils” and then see what the default output is “aplay -L”. you can search online on how to change that to the use the correct output device. you can test it works with “aplay ”
I have tried running the i2samp multiple times, alsa-utils, alsa-mixer, aplay, robot_hat enable_speaker. The microphones work apparently because it does respond to loud noises while running one of functional demos…
I feel your pain. I purchased PiDog for my birthday in June. I had so many problems I returned it and got a second one. The Robot Hat was bad on the second one and I had to wait ten days to get a replacement. I have been emailing Sunfounder literally almost daily to resolve different issues. PiDog will not do push ups when using the app although the app recognizes the voice commands. I have pretty much lost all confidence in Sunfounder and am currently researching other companies products. I definitely wouldn’t recommend Sunfounder to anyone wanting to learn about robotics and programming.
I also had the issue with the speaker. I disassembled my pidog and it turned out that the heat syncs had made a huge indent in the speakers. I had to get a new speaker from sunfounder.
We would like to provide an important recommendation regarding the installation of a heatsink on the Raspberry Pi CPU when used with the PiDog V1:
It is not recommended to attach a heatsink directly to the Raspberry Pi CPU in the PiDog V1 setup. The heatsink may come into contact with and press against the speaker, potentially causing damage to the speaker components.
If you still wish to install a heatsink, you will need to create additional space between the Raspberry Pi and the Robot HAT to accommodate the heatsink’s height. To achieve this, we recommend using a GPIO extension header or spacer to connect the Raspberry Pi and the Robot HAT, thereby increasing the vertical clearance.
This modification will provide sufficient space for the heatsink while protecting the speaker from damage.
Please ensure proper installation to avoid any component interference.