Level 6 · socketio

Robot Car Client

A Python client that connects to the robot car over Wi-Fi and sends movement commands (go, stop, left, right, back). Connect your laptop to the car's hotspot before running.

What it teaches: Network clients, real-time commands, robot control

How to run

Starter file: robot_car_client.py

python robot_car_client.py

Starter code

import socketio
import time

SERVER = 'http://192.168.4.1:5000'

sio = socketio.Client()

@sio.event
def connect():
    print(f'server connected: {SERVER}')

@sio.event
def disconnect():
    print('server disconnected')

@sio.on('status')
def on_status(data):
    print('server response:', data)

def send(action):
    sio.emit('cmd', {'action': action})
    time.sleep(0.1)  #

sio.connect(SERVER)

while True:
    direction = input("Enter direction: ")

    if direction == "go":
        send('go')
    elif direction == "stop":
        send('stop')
    if direction == "left":
        send('left')
    elif direction == "right":
        send('right')
    elif direction == "back":
        send('back')


sio.disconnect()

Challenge ideas

Easy

Add a help command that prints all available directions.
Change the delay in send() to make commands faster or slower.
Add quit or exit to break out of the loop cleanly.

Medium

Replace keyboard input with arrow-key controls using a library like keyboard or pynput.
Add error handling if the server is unreachable (try/except around sio.connect).
Log every command and server response to a text file.

Hard

Build a guizero GUI (Level 2) with on-screen buttons that send go/stop/left/right/back.
Add a sequence mode: type a series of moves like "go,left,go,stop" and run them automatically.
Combine with pygame (Level 4) to draw a simple remote-control dashboard.

Ask your AI tool

“How do I add a timeout and auto-reconnect if my socketio robot car client loses Wi-Fi connection?”