I’ve been diving in the past few years. You end up having to learn a lot of things. And need a lot of tools. Id compare it to woodworking. You can’t really “jus

I’ve been diving in the past few years. You end up having to learn a lot of things. And need a lot of tools. Id compare it to woodworking. You can’t really “just start” woodworking one day without buying some tooling and supplies. I’ve amassed a big little workshop over the last few years. I find the best way to get started is to have an idea of something you want to make, then just buy what is needed for that. Pick a microcontroller first. Arduino is popular and well documented. Raspberry Pi is overkill in my opinion. I find I like the NodeMCU. The mini D1 specifically as it as an ESP8266 for Wi-Fi support. If you need Bluetooth or whatever look for the ones you need. And use the Arduino IDE to program and code it. From there, most motors need a motor drive and there’s a million of those and it’s typically a separate board (breakout board). You want to stock up on breadboarding supplies. Openbuilds.com store is great if you have the need and budget for this type of items. You can get anything to build most any type of contraption and generally know it’s going to fit together if you plan correctly. YouTube is your best resource. I like reading text when it comes to software but reading electrical diagrams is hard for me and it’s so much easier if I can watch someone else. They often tell you the little gotchas too. Amazon is good for almost everything else. If you’re like me you’ll end up placing 50 orders in the first 2 months. The hardest part is no retail store, even hobby shops, stock these types of items. I will say I don’t find kits particularly helpful. They can be fun, but at the end of it you’ve just followed the directions and didn’t really learn anything. It’s like putting an ikea dresser together, if you’re trying to learn how to build furniture it’s not very helpful.