Thanks for sharing knowledge about robots, maybe I can get my hands on one sometime!
Ask HN: How do I learn robotics in 2025?
101–106 of 106 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do I learn robotics in 2025?
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah. As some has said already PLC are more oriented to robotic arms in factories etc, where space is not a premium. Robots like anymal from anybotics, spot from boston dynamics or the unidog from unitree to name a few don't use PLC at all due to lack of space. Also energy efficiency, mcu at most will push less than a watt to move something complex, a motor control for the FOC, I mentioned earlier. I worked for the p…
If you've managed to collect some good documentation, links appreciated! Or PDFs (my Gmail username is the same as my HN username) if inclined. Thank you!
About stm32 or the rp2040?
Re: Ask HN: How do I learn robotics in 2025?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you've managed to collect some good documentation, links appreciated! Or PDFs (my Gmail username is the same as my HN username) if inclined. Thank you!
About stm32 or the rp2040?
The ESP32. Thank you!
Though by total coincidence, it looks like I'm about to inherit responsibility for a fleet of Raspberry Pies that manage dashboards on a factory production floor. But they are older, and it's probably just going to be like managing any other low spec Debian server, albeit connected to a monitor.
Re: Ask HN: How do I learn robotics in 2025?
#104Do this course https://github.com/henki-robotics/robotics_essentials_ros2 Totally free, don't need to buy anything just a computer. I've been designing electrical hardware for robots for the last 4 years for a big corporation and I can tell you, the fun and money is in the software but having another skill is awesome. Robotics is a place where multiple fields converge and if you find a good team they will help you to…
I'm in the field and I disagree with the initial direction of this post. You aren't going to 'learn robotics' in a meaningful manner by checking the boxes in a online ROS2 course. Robotics is a compound discipline which pairs mechanical and electrical engineering knowledge with mathematics and software development. In order to get meaningful practice in all of these areas, I would recommend re-implementing a robot va…
I did a very basic version of this and it was a lot of fun. I bought a chassis online with tank treads that each had a motor. I used an Arduino to send the signal to each tread to turn and a distance sensor so it knew when it was arriving at an object. If it sensed that something was in front of it, it just turned 90 degrees and kept going.
Super simple but it felt like a big accomplishment to get that far.
Re: Ask HN: How do I learn robotics in 2025?
#105[dead]
Re: Ask HN: How do I learn robotics in 2025?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
The lego mindstorms kits were great for this. Nice and modular for the hardware, but still real enough to teach you lessons like sometimes identical motors don't work the same way.
Although the Mindstorms line is discontinued, nowadays there's the Lego SPIKE Prime (it's marketed more towards classrooms). Like the Mindstorms EV3, you can program it with either a visual block language or MicroPython.
Also check out https://pybricks.com, which gives MicroPython support for more LEGO sets.
IMO https://pybricks.com/project/saving-lego-mindstorms/ is especially interesting.