Why this exists
I spent three months building my first autonomous indoor robot — a navigation platform I wanted for a home project. The process was painful in a specific way: not the code, not the ROS2 complexity, but the endless parts mistakes. Wrong motor spec. Wrong cable connector. LIDAR that turned out to have poor ROS2 driver support. A power regulator that browned out on startup surge.
Each mistake cost a week — either waiting for replacement parts or debugging something that should have been caught before ordering. So I kept notes. Then I rebuilt more carefully and kept better notes. The Soohoo Robotics BOMs are those notes, structured as exportable parts lists with the engineering context that catches the mistakes.
What “validated” means
Every BOM in this catalog was assembled physically, at least once, in the Soohoo Labs reference build. The power budget numbers are from a bench supply measurement, not spec-sheet math. The thermal warnings are from running the system at peak load in an enclosure. The software stack version numbers are what was actually running, not what the wiki said to install.
When the engineering checklist says “Verified” — it means exactly that. When it says “Warning” — that warning came from something that failed or nearly failed during testing.
The reference platform
What's next
The three current kits cover the main tiers: MCU-only, RPi-based mobile, and Jetson-powered indoor AI. Coming next: firmware walkthroughs for each kit, a 3D mapping module (RP-LIDAR 3D upgrade), and a community build gallery where people can share their builds using the BOMs.
If you're building something with one of these kits and hit a problem I haven't documented, email me. That's how the engineering checklist grows.
Email Spencer →