2. Dive into the Arduino Programming

Too many choices - too many decisions

The openness of the Arduino platform gives the unprecedented flexibility. Anyone can find own combination of tools and approaches which fit best his or her level and preferences. This also brings some complexity. Usually, it is hard to find information about all available options in a single place. So, for most of us, it takes many trial and error attempts. If the "errors" path is too long - it gets harder and harder to stay motivated and keep going.


We are not going to provide a training here - there are lots of specialized resources which do this much better. Our goal is to make your learning path as short as possible and gain enough knowledge to understand and enjoy the next steps in our robot building challenge.

1. Dive into Electronics

Required Knowledge

Nowadays the entry barrier for robotics is not high. To start building some simple robots it is sufficient to know the very basic electricity principles, have the preliminary idea about how to use a computer, how to browse the Internet and work with documents.

You won't even need any soldering skills!

Still - any kind of extra knowledge will be extremely helpful for you. If you are keen to take your robotics hobby seriously but feel the lack of the core knowledge - consider participating in the basic online training like this one: Khan Academy: Electrical Engineering. The foundation Programming training can also be helpful.

0. Introductions

A while ago, me and my 10-years old son fell in love with the idea of building robots and implementing some electronics tricks to amuse ourselves and amaze others. Of course, our ambitions did not reach the level of constructing smart and autonomous Boston Dynamics-like beasts. We would like to create something small and friendly which will be wandering around our house and play soccer with our cat.

First, our imagination painted some noble and intelligent robot like the famous R2D2.