To get the most out of this book

You will need basic familiarity with electrical circuits and Ohm’s law, and you should have some experience with basic concepts of computer programming (variables, functions, and loops). Even if you do not have this knowledge, you can still read this book and learn the required skills on the fly. Each chapter has pointers to further reading that you can use to deepen your understanding or as starting point to fill in any gaps in your knowledge. If you have some experience of tinkering with hardware, building mechanisms, or soldering wires and electronic components, you are perfectly equipped for this book. The book assumes that you have used a solderless breadboard before to connect electronic components.

Software/hardware covered in the book	Operating system requirements
Arduino IDE 2.0.3 (or higher)	Windows, macOS, or Linux
Arduino Uno or Mega2560

All you need to start working with this book in addition to the free Arduino IDE software is an Arduino Uno or Arduino Mega2560 board, a solderless breadboard, and a few jumper wires. We will explore many additional, inexpensive hardware components in the individual chapters, but you neither need all of them, nor the exact models that are used in the book (with a few exceptions). If you want to recreate the experiments in a certain chapter, the chapter will point you to the hardware you need.

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code from the book’s GitHub repository (a link is available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

This book will enable you to use a wide variety of hardware components for Arduino DIY robots, far beyond the exact parts used in the examples throughout the chapters.