Basic Hardware Components

Hackster 101 is a series of "twotorials", videos under 3 minutes that will give you – anyone! – a springboard to explore and build limitless projects, including different microcontrollers that are perfect for home automation, robotics, wearable tech, and more. Choose your own adventure through this series, and dive into the written versions for more details.

Here are some of the components we'll be using as we begin.

Basics

• Breadboard: A pluggable platform for building circuits without soldering.

• Jumper wires: Double-ended connectors, these can have any combination of male and female ends. You'll usually use male-male wires to connect things on the breadboard.

• LED: Light-Emitting Diodes allow power to pass through in one direction, releasing the energy as light. Your basic ones have 2 legs, positive and negative. RGB (red-green-blue) ones have 4 legs (including power or ground) and can produce many colors.

• Resistor: These keep you from burning out your circuit by "slowing down" the flow of the electricity.

• Buttons and switches: Make and break connections. There are momentary (you have to hold them down to keep them on) and latching/toggle versions.

• Power: An essential component, provided by a battery or power supply.

Home automation

• Potentiometer (pot): A knob or slider, such as a dimmer for lights. It contains resistive material with electrical contacts that move together or apart, to control how much power is available for your components.

• Transistor: Use this as a programmatic switch, to "press" buttons on devices like coffee makers. It also works as an amplifier for sound or power.

• Relay: Toggle an outlet, fan, or other high-powered system. This little black box contains two electrical contacts, which move together or apart to connect or break the circuit. It makes a satisfying "click!"

• DC motor: Drive your window shades. This type of motor has two wires, and you can switch them to reverse the direction the motor spins.

• Light sensor: Detect day or night – popular for plant care or DIY alarms.

• Passive infrared sensor (PIR sensor / motion detector): A must for security systems.

• Moisture sensor: Useful for plant-watering systems. It measures the electrical resistance between two prongs: the wetter the environment, the more easily electricity travels from one to the other.

• Standalone temperature sensor: Often used in sous-vide systems and tea-brewing robots.

• Temperature & humidity sensor (DHT11 / DHT22): Use this for home smokers, kegerators, humidors, greenhouses, etc.

• NeoPixels and DotStars: These packaged multicolor LEDs require a microcontroller, but are easy to work with and popular for sprucing up media systems and vehicles, as well as robots and wearables.

Robotics

• Infrared LEDs and receivers: Build your own remote controls.

• Servo: Feed this motor a position and it goes there! Useful for constructing dials or driving robot arms.

• Distance sensor: Is your robot gonna hit a wall? Catch it before it leaves a dent.

• Inertial measurement unit (IMU): These usually include one or more of: accelerometer, which measures acceleration in 3D space (for example, acceleration due to gravity tells us which way is down); gyroscope, which measure rotation; and magnetometer, a compass module that can tell you which way is north for orientation.

• Buzzer: Makes annoying noises! Great!

Wearable tech

• Haptic vibration motor: For vibrational feedback. Discreet and arguably fun

• Flex sensor: Its resistance changes depending on how much it's flexed. Popular in smart gloves, since it can be used to detect finger positions.

• Microphone: In case you want to be That Guy, talking to the air. Some of these just detect the loudness of the environment, or you can tune several of them for different pitches of sound: build things that light up in response to music!

• Conductive thread: Sewable thread, made with stainless steel, which can replace wire to make wearables more flexible and comfortable. Watch how much you'll be flexing it, because it can fray and break more than regular thread; for more intense applications, consider headphone cables.

Music

• Speaker: Does what it says on the tin.

• Piezoelectric disc: Most buzzers have one of these on the inside. It's essentially a crystal sandwiched between two layers of metal. When voltage is applied in certain ways, it vibrates.

And...

You'll find some other components may be required in your early projects. Those are a little more complex to explain, so here's a quick list you can explore:

• Capacitor: a component that stores and discharges energy. These come in polar (orientation-sensitive) and nonpolar types.

• Stepper motor: a highly controllable motor that moves in discrete steps, useful for CNC applications like laser cutters and drawing machines. It's a little more complex to hook up than a 2-wire DC motor or servo, but there are code libraries and drive circuits available to help.

Next steps

Let's go control an LED light with a battery and then with an Arduino!

See the whole series of Hackster 101 tutorials on Hackster and YouTube!