Sometimes you have half an idea and are searching for inspiration, and other times you know exactly what you want to build and just need a guide to get there. Sometimes you have a component in front of you and have no idea what you could actually make with it. ...

There’s such a ridiculous amount of content available, that it can be overwhelming to get started. Here are a couple of tutorial websites, youtube channels, official references, etc. which we’ve found to be quite useful and accessible.

If you are overwhelmed by the selection presented here, just pick one at ...

The term AI (artificial intelligence) has been around since the 1960s and describes technologies that enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving, decision making, creativity and autonomy. Nowadays, chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude are used by the majority of people on a daily basis.

Throughout ...

Arduino UNO is a microcontroller board with  14 digital pins , 6 analog pins , a 16 MHz ceramic resonator, a USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header and a reset button.

It can be programmed with the Arduino IDE and is very beginner friendly.

Due to its simplicity, it lacks ...

ESP32 is a family of low-cost, energy-efficient microcontrollers that integrate both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities.

The ESP32 can be programmed with the Arduino IDE, similarly like the Arduino Uno.

Despite having more features than an Arduino Uno, different ESP32 models have different Pinouts, which may lead to confusion.

The Raspberry Pi is a family of single-board computers, widely used in prototyping. Unlike a microcontroller, it includes a full operating system (your choice of linux distro) with web browser, display/keyboard support, etc.. We used it in various projects where a microcontroller wasn’t powerful enough and mostly ran python scripts ...

Bela creates open source hardware and software tools for working with sound, touch and physical interaction.  It is an embedded computing platform designed for creating interactive audio projects with ultra-low latency. It features a browser-based IDE for coding directly on the board and support for languages including SuperCollider, C++, and ...

We’ve used a wide range of microcontrollers, most belonging to the ESP32 family, and this board by Heltec has been one of our favourites.

• powerful ESP32-S3 dual core processor
• onboard OLED display (very convenient for prototyping!)
• integrated battery management (can connect 3.7V Li-ion batteries and charge them over USB-C)
• USB-C connector!
• integrated Bluetooth (BLE only) ...

Another favourite devboard of ours, which most prominently powers our EAGEL / Not-A-Drone and found extensive use during 2025’s Summer School.

Seeed Studio’s XIAO series features smaller, but versatile and feature packed devboards with fairly good documentation to get you started. With the Sense’s camera and microphone, and Edge Impulse it’s easy to quickly ...

An LED is a semiconductor component that emits light when current flows through it. They come in single-color, RGB, addressable strips (like WS2812B/NeoPixels), and matrix arrays. LEDs are used for indicators, displays, ambient lighting, and visual feedback in interactive projects. A simple example: connecting an LED with a resistor to ...

Inside a speaker, a coil of wire (the voice coil) is attached to the membrane and suspended within a magnetic field. When alternating current flows through the coil, it is alternately attracted and repelled by the magnet, pushing the membrane back and forth rapidly — and those vibrations move the ...

The transistor is arguably the most important invention of the 20th century — modern computers, smartphones, and virtually all digital technology are built from billions of microscopic transistors etched onto silicon chips, switching on and off billions of times per second to process every calculation, image, and word we interact ...

A capacitor stores and releases electrical energy, acting like a small, fast-discharging battery. They come as electrolytic capacitors (polarized, high capacitance), ceramic capacitors (small, non-polarized), and supercapacitors. Capacitors smooth out voltage fluctuations, filter noise, and handle brief power bursts. A simple example: placing a 100µF capacitor across the power supply ...

A resistor limits the flow of electrical current in a circuit. Resistors come in the form of through-hole components with colour-coded bands, surface-mount (SMD) chips and resistor arrays. Resistors are used for various purposes, such as protecting components, setting voltage levels, and pulling signal lines high or low. One simple ...

A sensor detects a physical property in the environment and converts it into an electrical signal. There are countless types of sensor, including those that measure temperature (DHT22), distance (HC-SR04 ultrasonic), light (LDR), motion (PIR), pressure and humidity. They enable projects to respond to the real world. A simple example ...

A potentiometer is a variable resistor that the user adjusts manually using a rotating or sliding knob. Common forms include rotary potentiometers, slide potentiometers, and trimmer potentiometers for fine internal adjustment. They are used for volume control, tuning parameters, and analogue user input. For example, connecting a potentiometer to an ...

A switch is a component that opens or closes an electrical circuit physically. Examples include push buttons, toggle switches, slide switches, reed switches (which are triggered by magnets) and tilt switches. Switches provide direct user input or physical state detection. One simple example is wiring a push button between a ...

E-textiles integrate electronics into fabric, creating garments and objects that sense, light up, or compute. Forms include conductive thread, fabric sensors, sewable microcontrollers (like the Adafruit Flora), and flexible PCBs. They are used for wearable art, health monitoring, and interactive fashion.

The field emerged in the late 1990s, pioneered by researchers ...

A breadboard is a reusable prototyping board that enables components to be connected without soldering. Consisting of rows of connected holes arranged in a grid, it has power rails running along the sides. Breadboards are used for quickly testing and iterating on circuits before committing to a permanent design. For ...

As the name suggests, these are special power supplies where one can adjust the voltage and current provided by them. We used our big and bulky and accurate professional bench power supply when working in the lab, but also made great use of our little portable usb one, when out ...

Also known as LiPo – Lithium-Polymer Batteries; same thing.

Single-use 9V batteries used to be the standard when building little electronics circuits (and we did use them quite a bit), but these days, rechargeable batteries are an obvious upgrade. It would be too much to get into the details, but the ...

The piezoelectric effect describes the ability of certain materials—such as specific ceramics or crystals—to generate an electric charge when they are mechanically deformed. When pressure, vibration, or bending is applied to a piezoelectric element, the structure of its internal charges shifts, producing a measurable voltage. Alternatively, one can apply a ...

Why use batteries or be stuck to a wall charger, when you can harness the awesome power of nuclear fusion, instead?!

While solar panels are quite a bit more powerful and easier to actually get useable energy generation out of, one still needs a couple of (cheap) specialty components to power ...

9V batteries (usually non-rechargeable) were the standard power supply for DIY or experimental electronics for quite a while and we used them for our Atari Punk Console workshops and the Electrosluch. Both can however be quite easily powered via modern and rechargeable li-ion batteries, despite their lower voltage.

One should ...

USB phone chargers are perfectly adequate for powering microcontrollers or even a Raspberry Pi for basic projects. No need to buy a new one, just reuse any old charger you might have lying around.

Certain components — especially motors and pumps, but also long LED strips or matrix displays — ...

C++ is a high-level, general purpose programming language.

Most Microcontrollers like the Arduino Uno and ESP32 can be programmed with C++ and can the code be divided into three main parts:

• Functions
• Variables
• Structure

The official Arduino website offers more detailed information.

Python is a programming language which offers a high level of code readability with the use of significant indentations. Single board computers, like the Raspberry Pi, can be programmed with Python. For Microcontrollers, a lightweight implementation of Python, called MicroPython, can be used. MicroPython allows users to skip the compile-load-run ...

Java is an object oriented programming language and was first released in 1995. The syntax is similar to C++, but has fewer low level facilities.

The digital forest project was built on Processing, which uses Java.

SuperCollider is a free, open-source platform for real-time audio synthesis and algorithmic composition, featuring a powerful text-based language (sclang) and a fast audio engine (scsynth). Developed since 1996, it is widely used by artists and researchers for sound design, live coding, and interactive performance.

We used it for a sound installation for ...

Blender is a free and open source 3D creation software which supports modelling, animation, simulation and rendering. Blenders Python scripting also allows users to write specialised tools and customise the application. Getting started with Blender is fairly easy, thanks to the official extensive support, big online community and many online ...

An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software that provides a set of features for software development, like source code editing, source control, build automatisation and debugging.

For our projects, we mostly used VSCode and the Arduino IDE. The Arduino IDE does not support CoPilot and lacks semantic error highlighting, meaning ...

Processing is a  is a flexible software sketchbook and a language for learning how to code in a visual context. Processing uses Java, with additional simplifications such as additional classes and aliased mathematical functions and operations. The Digital Forest was built using Processing and runs on a Raspberry Pi, which ...

GitHub is a platform that allows users to create, store, manage, and share their code.

We used GitHub to share our codes from the projects and to document them.

The LiFo GitHub repository can be found under: https://github.com/reallaborwald

Sometimes it’s easier to not physically assemble a circuit, but to simply simulate it! Luckily, there are a number of free tools available to do just that. Here’s just a small selection of free and accessible tools we found useful.

Falstad Circuit Simulator

For when you want to get things done.

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