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Chapters

This textbook is organized into 13 chapters covering 240 concepts.

Chapter Overview

  1. Introduction to Computational Thinking and Physical Computing - Establishes the four pillars of computational thinking, introduces physical computing, and covers foundational engineering design and electronics concepts.
  2. Hardware Platform and Robot Assembly - Covers the Raspberry Pi Pico, Cytron Maker Pi board, GPIO pins, and guides students through assembling the robot chassis without soldering.
  3. MicroPython and Development Environment Setup - Sets up the Thonny IDE and REPL, teaches UF2 firmware flashing, and introduces MicroPython fundamentals including variables, data types, and operators.
  4. Control Flow, Functions, and Exception Handling - Covers if/elif/else, for and while loops, function definitions, exception handling, and importing modules.
  5. Data Structures, Modular Programming, and Version Control - Introduces lists, tuples, dictionaries, modular code patterns, code documentation, and version control with Git.
  6. Electronics, DC Motors, and Communication Protocols - Explores H-bridge circuits and transistors for motor direction control, power electronics, and the I2C and SPI communication buses.
  7. PWM, Motor Speed Control, and Actuators - Masters pulse-width modulation for motor speed, servo angles, piezo buzzer tones, and GPIO interrupts.
  8. Sensors and Data Input - Introduces time-of-flight, ultrasonic, infrared, bump switch, and potentiometer sensors with calibration and data filtering techniques.
  9. Display Systems and Visual Output - Programs NeoPixel LED strips and the OLED display to show text, graphics, animations, and live sensor data visualizations.
  10. Robot Behaviors and Autonomous Navigation - Integrates sensors and motors to implement collision avoidance, line following, dance sequences, and project file patterns.
  11. Wireless Networking and Web Servers - Connects the Raspberry Pi Pico W to WiFi and builds a socket-based web server for controlling the robot via HTTP.
  12. Bluetooth Low Energy Fundamentals - Introduces BLE advertising, scanning, GATT protocol, central/peripheral roles, and robot-to-robot message sending.
  13. Swarm Robotics and Advanced Engineering Patterns - Implements multi-robot BLE coordination with leader/follower behaviors, then covers state machines, PID control, multithreading, and data logging.

How to Use This Textbook

Chapters are ordered so that every concept appears after all of its prerequisites — you can read them front to back without skipping. Each chapter lists all concepts covered; complete earlier chapters before moving to advanced ones, since later chapters build directly on the programming skills, hardware knowledge, and robot behaviors introduced in prior chapters.

Note: Each chapter includes a full concept list from the learning graph. The marker "TODO: Generate Chapter Content" at the bottom of each chapter index indicates where detailed content will be added by the chapter content generation skill.