ROBOTICS PROTOTYPING: ZERO TO HERO
The purpose of this learning plan is for anyone to acquire a strong foundation in electronic and mechanical prototyping to build your own physical robots. You will learn coding along the way, so I could say coding is not required but it’s easier to follow if you’ve already coded before. It is designed for anyone who has literally zero background in electronics and/or robotics. Upon completion, you should be be able build your own domestic home service robot and you should also have the confidence to independently build the robot of your dreams. There are many good tutorials scattered all over the web but they assume you have basic knowledge that you may not have. Upon finishing this self-learning plan, it should be a breeze to follow any online tutorials for adding the features you want to your robot.

Most of the materials here are completely free, however some require purchase, those with a (money bag) 💰icon. I am not paid to endorse any of these products.
The ones with a (rotating light) 🚨 icon are source materials which I believe are essential.
IMPORTANT! Some source materials here are redundant, the purpose of the redundancy is to reinforce ideas. You might feel that some materials are insulting to your intelligence. These skimmable materials are marked with a (paw prints) 🐾 icon. Based on my experience when I started out, reading the same topic from different source materials strengthened my understanding to the point that I know them like the back of my hand. You can regard these materials as optional (I.E. skip them) but I encourage you to at least skim them. I don’t advice you to follow the instructions laid out on the skimmable materials, however, I suggest you read them maybe like half an hour before sleeping at night.
Before Anything else: Some Inspirational Stuff
ICONS
- 📚 Read / Text
- 📺 Watch / Video
- 💰 Buy / Requires purchase
- 🐾 Very easy / Skimmable
- 🚨Essential / Most helpful
- 👋 Hands-on
Hands-on Learning Plan
- ❤️ Level 0: Gain Strong Foundation in Open-source Electronic Prototyping
- ❤️ Level 1: Gain Intuition in Mechanical Prototyping and Design
- ❤️ Level 2: Apply Basic Machine Learning and Computer Vision: Facial Recognition
- ❤️ Level 3: Build your own home-service robot with ROS and Turtlebot 3!
Level 0, 1, and 2 take about one to three full weekends each. Level 3 takes about 8–12 full weekends but I believe you’ll find it very rewarding.


Level 0: SUPER NEWBIE
- Arduino
- Raspberry Pi
Arduino
- 💰🚨👋Affordable Very Basic Arduino Starter Kit from DFRobot
- 💰🚨👋Motor party add-on pack for Arduino
- 💰🚨👋 Amazon: Vastar Soldering Iron Kit
- 💰📚Simon Monk: Arduino Next Steps
- 🚨📺Jeremy Blum Arduino Playlist: 15 Videos
- 🚨👋📚📺 Adafruit: Collin’s Lab: Soldering
- 🚨📚Adafruit: Motor Selection Guide
- 🚨👋📚Adafruit Motor Shield V2 for Arduino
- 🚨📚Adafruit: All about Batteries
- 🐾📚Simon Monk Basic Arduino: 18 lessons
- 🐾📚Adafruit Manual
- 🐾📚Sparkfun Manual
- 🐾📚DFRobot Manual
- 🐾📺Official Arduino Tutorials by the Creator of Arduino


Raspberry Pi
- 💰🚨Adafruit: Raspberry Pi DIY Camera Pack
- 💰🚨Raspberry Pi
- 🚨👋📚Official: Setting-up Raspberry Pi (Raspberry Pi Foundations)
- 🚨👋📚DIY WiFi Raspberry Pi Touchscreen Camera
- 🚨👋📚Connect Arduino and Raspberry Pi via Serial or I2C (Oscar Liang)
- 🐾📚Simon Monk Basic Raspberry Pi: 13 lessons





Level 2: INTERMEDIATE





Where to go from here
- My repository Robotics Coursework, is a curated collection of places where you can learn robotics, algorithms, and other useful tools for aspiring robotics software engineers.

