Technician's corner

The software underneath the charm: SDKs, simulators, APIs, licenses, and update cadences, synthesized from each platform's own documentation. This is where we answer the question the spec sheets dodge — what can you actually build with it, and what happens to the code when the company sneezes?

Reports are sourced from each platform's published documentation. Currently tracking 6 open platforms.

Dev-stack reports

Freenove Robot Kits: The Dev Experience, from GitHub Tutorials to ESP32

The budget kit workhorse publishes every line of code and every tutorial page free on GitHub — here's what building on Freenove's stack is actually like.

2026-08-29 · 3 min read · doc-sourced

OpenCat: The Open-Source Framework Behind Petoi's Bittle & Nybble

The quadruped framework that started as one engineer's cat robot — what OpenCat gives you on day one, from serial gait commands to Python and Scratch.

2026-08-29 · 3 min read · doc-sourced

The Pollen Robotics Dev Stack: Reachy Mini & Microduck SDKs, Explained

One French robotics team, two cute robots, one open pipeline — what you actually get to program, from Python SDK to MuJoCo sim to the Hugging Face Hub.

2026-08-29 · 3 min read · doc-sourced

Platform quick reference

Microduck — Apache-2.0

API surface: open-source
SDK languages: Python
Simulation: MuJoCo, LeRobot ecosystem
Cloud dependency: none
Firmware: open
Docs: https://pollen-robotics.com/microduck/

Full RL training stack published; all seven shipped policies open and retrainable; Hugging Face ecosystem integration.

Reachy Mini — Apache-2.0

API surface: open-source
SDK languages: Python
Simulation: LeRobot ecosystem
Cloud dependency: none
Firmware: open
Docs: https://huggingface.co/blog/reachy-mini

Python SDK; JS/Scratch announced; app/behavior sharing via HF Hub; tens of thousands of preorders imply a large future app ecosystem.

Robomate — open docs + printable bodies

API surface: documented
SDK languages: web-based HQ tuning
Cloud dependency: none
Firmware: updatable
Docs: https://docs.rbmates.com/

docs.rbmates.com, 3d.rbmates.com printable bodies, full spare-parts catalog — repairability as a design principle.

Vector 2.0 — documented API

API surface: documented
SDK languages: Python
Cloud dependency: required-with-subscription
Firmware: updatable

Official Python SDK; the wire-pod/OSKR community keeps it hackable — closed product, open-ish afterlife.

Petoi Bittle X — OpenCat (open source)

API surface: open-source
SDK languages: Python, C++, Scratch
Cloud dependency: none
Firmware: open
Docs: https://docs.petoi.com/
Source: https://github.com/PetoiCamp/OpenCat

OpenCat framework with active community; education-friendly docs; voice control onboard.

SunFounder PiDog — open source code

API surface: open-source
SDK languages: Python, Scratch
Cloud dependency: optional
Firmware: open
Docs: https://docs.sunfounder.com/

Complete online docs; OpenClaw multi-LLM agent (2026); classic SunFounder tutorial depth.

Why a registry keeps a technician's corner

Open stacks are this category's life insurance. Vector outlived its maker because wire-pod exists; Microduck ships with its entire training pipeline public. Platform maturity is scored on every relevant specimen page as Developer Platform — this corner is the evidence room behind that number.