The Arduino Mega isn’t the brain of a retro arcade cabinet — a Raspberry Pi is. It’s the part that makes the cabinet feel alive: lit buttons, an RGB marquee, a coin door that clicks. Here’s the division of labor these builds actually run on, and the USB gotcha that catches almost everyone.
The SG90 is in every starter kit and still costs about two dollars, but plastic gears and a 500-700 mA stall current set hard limits on what it can do. Here’s exactly where it still wins, where it fails, and when the metal-gear MG90S is worth the swap.
Arduino is a microcontroller; Raspberry Pi is a computer. Here’s what that actually means for your project, why the Pi has no analog pins, and which one to buy first.
PID control is three lines of arithmetic with a scary reputation. Here’s what P, I, and D each do, when a hobby robot can skip it entirely, and the $12 sensor you’ll want when you can’t.
A $35 ESP32-CAM build that sends a photo of whoever is at your door straight to your phone, with no subscription and no cloud storage. Full parts list, the GPIO conflicts nobody warns you about, and why the power supply is the step that kills most builds.
One question settles the choice between a stepper, a servo, and a DC gearmotor almost every time: does the shaft need to know where it is? Here is how to answer it, and which specific part to buy for each case.
The IDE compiles fine and then nothing reaches the board. Nine times out of ten it is one of six boring causes, and there is a right order to check them in.
The EEZYbotARM MK2 uses a parallel linkage to keep every servo bolted to the base, so the moving arm is nothing but plastic. Here is why that design works, and the three parts you actually need to get it running.
Most beginners buy the wrong soldering iron, and it’s why their joints fail. Here’s what adjustable temperature and wattage actually do, which tip to use, and three irons worth your money.
A breadboard gives you no documentation and no warning when you have wired it wrong. Here is exactly which holes connect to which, how much current the clips can really take, and the four mistakes that actually destroy components.