Welcome to our fast-paced and practical workshop designed to take you from zero to make a hero by learning a wide variety of maker skills. Follow along as we design, construct and program our projects bit by bit, week by week.

Welcome to our first topic, choosing a project. Having a project that you can build alongside with us is a really good idea because you will get the most out of this course if you can take what you learn in a video and then immediately apply it in your own project with your own problems and find your own solutions using what we learn.

My project for this workshop will of course be a first prototype of a home assistant robot, mainly just getting something to move around first, and Liam's is a very cool autonomous plant watering and monitoring setup, but this video is about helping you choose a project.

I went around and pestered and asked every single maker in our office the same question, how do you approach a project and what pointers would you give for beginners? And weirdly, I got back pretty much the same set of responses from everyone and all of these answers could be boiled down into five things.

First things first, define your project and its scope. The scope is kind of just a list of things that you want your project to do or not to do. For example, I want my chassis to be able to move forwards, backwards, rotate, move side to side. I want to have a suspension system on it. I want it to be about 60 by 60 centimetres, lights underneath it, an emergency shutdown, etc, etc. By defining the scope of your project like this, we kind of give it some form so we can start to get an idea of what it will look like.

The next thing is to take your project idea and divide it into smaller problems. Okay, so I want my robot to be able to move forwards, backwards, side to side and rotate. Let's break down how I'm going to do that. Well, I'm probably going to need to use a set of these mecanum wheels here, which will let my robot have that movement. Sweet. But now I'm going to need a way to drive it and control those wheels. Let's break that down again. So to drive my wheel, I'm probably going to need a motor and then some way to connect the two. Probably a little bit bigger of a motor than this. And we can break that down one more time. To connect these two, I'm probably going to need to put the wheel on an axle and then mount the motor somewhere and then use two gears to connect them together and see how my idea has gone from, I need my project to move around to, I need to find mecanum wheels, I need to get motors, I need to find a way to mount the motor, I need axles, I need to make gears. We now have a list of very specific things to build or investigate. There are no big problems, just lots of little ones. And knowing where to start in a project can often be the trickiest thing, but by doing this to your whole project, you get a complete to-do list of how to complete your project.

Now, this is a big one. If you're a beginner maker, it's probably a good idea to do a project that's been done a thousand times before. Choosing a good project is a skill and it's one that comes with experience, because knowing if a project is hard or easy or even possible is a skill that comes with practice. Just doing projects, you learn what projects you can do. And you don't want to pick a project that's beyond your skill level because then you have to shelve it. You don't want to pick one that's too easy or you're not going to learn from it. There is a bit of a Goldilocks zone in this So by doing a project that has been done a thousand times before, maybe one and more so at beginners, this means that you can see someone else's work and see what they did when they got stuck or how they solved an issue with that project. But this doesn't mean you need to copy someone else's project exactly. You can always take their idea, remix it a little bit, add some features and personalize it to make it your own. And just by doing projects, you'll become a more experienced maker and you can start to do bigger and more unique projects. But the important thing is to start with achievable projects that you're going to actually learn from.

The first step of mastery is mimicry. A really simple one. Make failure your friend. Don't be afraid to fail because that is how lessons are learned. A lot of work in a project is going to be trial and error. Maybe you design a part, doesn't fit, change it, reprint it, still doesn't fit, change it, reprint it, it fits, but it doesn't mesh with the other parts correctly. If you keep trying, it'll eventually work. And trial and error is just a really fancy word for fail and try it again. So see every failure as a chance to try again with a better understanding. Don't be afraid to fail.

And I think one of the most important things is to find a community. This one, I think a lot of people are sleeping on, but it's one of the most important ones. Go out and join your local makerspace or fab lab or any sort of organization that builds things. Not only will they have the tools and machinery for you to use for your projects, but there are experienced makers there who can help you when your project gets bogged down. They can tell you if what you're trying to do is going to work or not. You could share and demonstrate your project with them. And chances are you'll eventually be able to help others with their own projects. The maker movement is very community-orientated, so pop into a physical location if you can. If not, find an online space like our community forums. We have a whole bunch of amazing people on there who are willing to help out on projects great and small.

So if you haven't already, go out there and find a project you want to do. Maybe a cool thing you've always wanted to build or a product that you're not happy with and you want to make your own version of that. Or maybe there is a problem that you can build a solution for. If you are looking for some inspiration though, we have some resources on the course page of some fantastic projects to have a look at.