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The learning paths

Six paths, a hundred-odd lessons, and how a lesson checks your circuit.

The map

/learn is the map: six paths, each drawn as chapters with the lessons inside them. A path opens at /learn/path/<id>.

Everything works signed out. Progress is kept in this browser and merged into your account the first time you sign in, keeping the higher of every number and the union of every badge, so nothing you did is taken away.

The six paths

  • Electronics basics, about 6 hours. A breadboard, a few parts and no processor at all: what current, voltage, time and logic really do.
  • Embedded on the Arduino Uno, about 12 hours. One board, twenty pins and a C++ sketch, from a lamp you switch to a game you can play.
  • Embedded on the ESP32-C3, about 11 hours. A 32 bit RISC-V board at 160 MHz, its own peripherals, its own 3.3 V rules, and a console at the end.
  • Embedded on the Raspberry Pi Pico, about 6 hours. A Cortex-M0+ at 125 MHz, PWM on every pin, a 64 bit clock, and pins that do not forgive 5 V.
  • Embedded on the STM32F411, about 6 hours. A Cortex-M4 at 84 MHz, where a pin is a port and a number and every peripheral starts with its clock off.
  • C++ on a board, about 10 hours. The language, one idea per lesson, on a board that shows you what your code did.

Inside a lesson

The lesson opens in the editor as a pane beside the circuit. It is steps, each with instructions, an optional hint, and a Check.

A Check reads the same frame of the simulation the canvas is drawing, and it comes in four kinds:

  • pin: a pin has to be at a level, or to have toggled so many times
  • probe: a part's own reading has to be in a range, which is how "the LED is lit" is judged
  • serial: the serial output has to contain something
  • manual: nothing to check, so you tick it yourself

The first three mean the circuit genuinely did the thing. The last means you read a paragraph, and the XP says so.

The first two lessons on the electronics path, Build your first circuit and Make it blink with an Uno, have a fifth kind: wired. The step is checked against the wires you have drawn, not a running circuit, so it ticks itself the moment the right wire lands and the next step opens on its own. If something is missing, the line above the buttons says which two things are not joined yet. The two holes each step is about pulse on the board, and on a phone the board zooms in until they are far enough apart to hit with a finger. The last step, holding the button, also passes by itself while you hold it.

Chapters and bosses

Each path is chapters, and a chapter ends in a boss lesson. A boss step pays double, which is the whole reason to reach the end of a chapter.

A node on the map unlocks when the one before it is done.

Writing your own

The editor has an authoring pane: write the steps, and build each checkpoint from a list of the circuit's actual pins, nets and probes rather than typing a name and hoping. There is a Preview as learner button, and a finished lesson can be published, hearted and forked like a project.

A teacher can assign one to a class. See assignments and submissions.

What you earn

XP and levels, streaks and badges, and the daily challenge and the leaderboard.