Robotics is all about movement. Just like you and I have muscles that push and pull, your robotic creation will likely have some sort of motor that will turn or spin. Part of your robot project will be to convert that turning or spinning into the movements you want. A twisting servo can become an elbow, a spinning motor can become a wheel.

You have a project in mind where something needs to move. This is the guide for you!

This Guide is in three parts:

PART 1: Getting Started Quickly with various motors and Crickit

PART 2: I want something to move like this, how do I do it?

PART 3: What are the various motors and how they work

Introducing Adafruit Crickit

The toughest thing about robotics is "Motor Control" - how to get your ideas into motion (literally!).

To make this as easy as possible, we'll be using CRICKIT. The Adafruit Crickit (a Creative Robotics & Interactive Construction Kit) allows you to connect different programmable boards to motors quickly and easily.

The Crickit is the muscle behind your project. It needs a brain like a Circuit Playground Express to plug in. Once that is done, you can hook the motor to Crickit, code your microcontroller,  power it on, it moves!

Crickit comes in four types depending on the microcontroller/board you want to use:

• Adafruit Circuit Playground Express board
• Adafruit Feather board
• BBC micro:bit board
• Raspberry Pi (40 pin, all modern Pis)

Here are the four corresponding Crickit boards: