It’s easy to overspend before you’ve built anything. Here’s the short list of what actually gets you started.

The essentials

  • A breadboard — for building circuits without soldering
  • A multimeter — for checking voltage, continuity, and resistance
  • Jumper wires — to connect components on the breadboard
  • A basic component kit — resistors, LEDs, capacitors, a few transistors
  • A microcontroller board — an Arduino Uno or an ESP32 board , depending on whether you want USB-only projects or built-in Wi-Fi

What you don’t need yet

  • A soldering iron — useful eventually, not for your first breadboard circuits
  • An oscilloscope — great for debugging signals, overkill for blinking an LED
  • A big component drawer set — buy components as projects need them at first

Next steps

Once you’ve got the essentials, the next post in this series covers how to actually use a breadboard, followed by your first project: blinking an LED. If your multimeter is giving you a stubborn 0V reading while you’re getting set up, here’s why.