This page is dedicated to helpful websites for the project. No prior experience is needed, but learning basic skills in Arduino and SOLIDWORKS will be very helpful; therefore, if you have no experience with these platforms, we highly recommend checking out these sites before you start. We have also included other resources to help you troubleshoot and give you more extensive knowledge in relevant topics if you wish to learn more or need to troubleshoot an issue. Click on the header to go to the website. Please let us know if you have any suggestions on pages to add!
Sparkfun Learn
Sparkfun learn has resources on a wide range of electronics topics. This is a great place to go to learn more about the basics. Some great pages to look at and get familiar with the concepts are Voltage, Current, Resistance, and Ohm's Law, How to Solder, What is a Circuit, Analog vs Digital, and How to Use a Multimeter which will come is especially handy if you run into any electrical troubles. In addition they have some other interesting pages worth checking out and re a great place to start if you run into trouble or want to learn more.
Arduino-Digikey
This page on Digikey has a great step by step guide on how to download and navigate Arduino for the first time. In this example they are using a board made by Arduino. Since our board is not made by Arduino you will have to download some packages to make it compatible so you can see it on your COM port. Go to the setting up Arduino page to learn more. However, this page is great for showing you around the IDE and we highly recommend doing some of the examples if you have access to a Arduino board.
Arduino Forum
Arduino Forum is a place where you can go to get specific Arduino questions answered. You can post a question yourself or use previous people questions to try and answer your own. I find this to be a better place than Stack overflow to answer Arduino questions since they are more friendly to beginners and knowledgeable in Arduino specifically. Most questions you will have already have been answered so make sure to check out the archives first.
SourceCAD
SourceCAD has a series of videos explains the basics of how to use SOLIDWORKS. To work with this project the only thing you need to know with SOLIDWORKS is how to make a part into an STL. However, if you would like to make any changes this website is a good place to start learning the basics. YouTube also has many videos for beginners.
Tutorials Point - Basic Electronics
Tutorials Point has a extensive course that goes through many electronics topics very in depth. If you would like to know about intermediate electronics and dive into more specific concepts, they are fantastic.
Northwestern Robotics
Northwestern Robotics YouTube page has many lectures on useful topics related to this project. Specifically, they do a great job explaining PID controllers, how DC motors work, gearing, using libraries, motor control and more. To learn about PID controllers this is what we recommend.