The completed Star Shooter robot
All the Movit kits include a comprehensive instruction booklet which should be followed closely during the construction process to ensure a successful conclusion!

The Star Shooter in kit form as removed from the box.
All the parts are clearly laid out in relevent groups and detailed in the comprehensive instruction manual accompanying the kit. Individual parts should not be removed until required and care should be taken to correctly identify tapping screws, machine screws and so on to avoid confusion during assembly. All traces of joiners (sprue) should be removed from all the parts.

The Star Shooter robot is supplied with a smoked grey finish which may be painted over in appropriate football team colours. Should you wish to colour your robot, use paint for plastic models and apply to the panels before assembly.

The first step in the construction of the Star Shooter is the attachment of the three motors and shafts. The small pinion gears should be mounted onto the motor shafts (the use of a small hammer may assist here), and the larger pinion gears should be put onto each end of the gear shaft flush with the surface.

The top panel (seen here on the right) can now be assembled. One of the motors is put in place terminal side up, with the pinion gear meshing onto the gear shaft to the front, before screwing the cover in place with 2 small, 2 medium and 1 large machine screw. Refer to the instruction booklet here.

The tyres should then be fitted to the wheels before attaching them to the sides, securing the large flat spur gears onto the wheel shafts with lock nuts. The lock nuts should be tightened until the wheel and gear start rotating together.
The 2 remaining motors can now be attached to the side panels and the remaining gears put in place. Layout of the gears can be seen in the left hand photograph.

The sides can now be screwed onto the side panels before moving on to the assembly of the rear panel and rotors and final assembly of the footballing robot.

The final stage is to connect the wiring from the controller, which can be seen in the photograph on the right. Please refer to the instruction booklet for the correct wiring!

Unlike many of the robots in our range, the Star Shooter is remote controlled, operated via a simple handset, which also has to be assembled. This should be done following the instructions in the booklet. The 4 AA batteries should only be inserted once the controller has been wired to the robot, to prevent any possible shorting.

Control of the Star Shooter is via the two roller switches on the controller, which can clearly be seen in the photograph on the right. Using these switches, the Star Shooter can perform unrestricted moves - forward, backwards, rotation and so on, although a little practice may well be necessary to perfect your technique! Ball catching and shooting is performed using the rocker switch at the front of the controller - pressing the left hand rocker will catch and pressing the right hand rocker will shoot.

The assembled Star Shooter is now ready for action, and with a little practice can be surprisingly agile on the robot soccer pitch.

There are several games that this robot can play, along with its colleague the Spin Shooter, which can be seen alongside on the right. The first of these is, obviously, robot (or robo-) soccer, but other games could include gathering balls, where teams of robots have to score goals with numerous balls, and also sumo wrestling.

Football should be played on a ping-pong table, around which fences should be placed as well as a goal at each end. The ball is simply a brightly coloured ping-pong ball. Teams are generally between 1 and 3 players and each half of the game is usually 5 minutes long, changing ends at half-time.

Both the Star Shooter and the Spin Shooter are very simple soccer-playing robots, which cannot hope to compete against the more "professional" software-driven robo-soccer bots such as the MIABOTS. However, in their own way, these bots can provide a great deal of fun in friendly matches between friends.

Good shooting!!