For this book, the main component you will need is, of course, a control board, which, depending on the chapter, may be a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino-based board. The beginning of each chapter lists the complete list of items required to build your project. We will also show you how to program the control boards for the project and how to connect all the components together. We will guide you step-by-step through building the hardware so that you are not left behind.

An understanding of electronic hardware, networking, and basic programming skills would help you move quickly through the chapters, however, we will provide detailed explanations of the software setup in case you need more hand-holding at any point.