Before Class 1
Your kit
What you must be able to install, what is free, what the department lends you, and what is worth buying later. The honest version, with prices, and with the things not to waste money on.
What you must have, what the department lends you, what is worth buying later, and what not to waste money on. Honest, with prices, and revised when they change.
The one that is not optional#
A laptop you are allowed to install software on.
This is the whole kit list, and it is the one thing that stops people. A machine locked by an IT policy that forbids installing a compiler will cost you every practical block of this course. If your only machine is managed, tell the department in week one rather than in Class 2.
Beyond that: anything from the last six or seven years is fine. This course compiles nothing large and renders nothing long. 8 GB of memory is workable, 16 is comfortable. Any operating system. About 20 GB free.
Software, all free#
| What | Why | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Python 3.11 or newer | Classes 1 to 5. The default language for production tooling | python.org, or your package manager |
| A real editor | VS Code is the default and free. Not a word processor, ever | code.visualstudio.com |
| git | Class 3 onwards. Already installed on macOS and Linux | git-scm.com |
| Node 20 or newer | Class 6. Also gets you npx, which runs things without installing them | nodejs.org |
| Arduino IDE 2.x | Class 5. Or PlatformIO if you already know it | arduino.cc |
| An AI coding tool | Class 4. Whichever your department provides | Ask before you pay |
| A terminal | Built in. Windows: use Windows Terminal with PowerShell or WSL | Already there |
Install Python, git and an editor before Class 1. Node before Class 6. Arduino before Class 5. Doing each the night before is fine; doing them all in the first ten minutes of a class is not, because that ten minutes is everybody's.
Hardware, borrowed and owned#
The department lends everything needed for Class 5. If you want your own, this is the order to buy in.
| What | Rough price | Worth owning? |
|---|---|---|
| An Arduino-compatible board | £8 to £25 | Yes, first purchase. A clone Uno or a Nano is fine |
| A USB cable that carries data | £5 | Yes. Half of all "my board is not detected" is a charge-only cable |
| Breadboard and jumper wires | £10 | Yes, with the board |
| A few LEDs and resistors | £5 | Yes. 220 Ω and 10 kΩ cover most of it |
| A multimeter | £25 to £60 | Yes if you are also doing Electronics for Theatre, which specifies it properly |
| ESP32 board | £6 to £15 | Later. Wi-Fi and much more speed, for when the Uno runs out |
| Raspberry Pi 4 or 5, with a case, PSU and card | £70 to £130 | Later, and only if you are building something real |
| A short DMX cable and a USB DMX interface | £15 to £80 | Only if lighting is your direction |
Do not buy: a starter kit with 200 components you will never identify, a soldering iron for this course (Electronics for Theatre specifies the right one), or a Raspberry Pi before you have a project for it. A Pi in a drawer is a Pi you will replace with a newer one before you use it.
Buy a proper SD card for the Pi. The cheapest cards fail, and they fail as corruption during a show rather than as a clean refusal at your desk. An A2-rated card from a brand you recognise costs a few pounds more and is the single best money in this list.
Accounts and services#
| What | Free tier | Do you need it |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub | Yes, unlimited private repositories | Yes. It is where your repository lives so that it is a backup |
| An AI coding tool | Varies, and changes | Ask the department first. Do not pay before you know what you have |
| A cloud render or deploy service | Generous free tiers | Only for Class 6, and only if you want to publish |
On paying for an AI tool: the free tiers are enough for this course. If you do pay, understand what you are paying for, which is Class 4 arithmetic: tokens in, tokens out, and a rate. A subscription is not a bottomless bucket and a per-token bill is not a subscription.
What good looks like on your machine#
By Class 3 you should have:
- A folder for this course, under version control, pushed somewhere that is not your laptop
- A README in it, ten lines, that a stranger could follow
- Python, Node, git and your editor all runnable from a terminal without a full path
- One scratch folder you do not care about, for running things the first time
That last one is not a joke. Rule 2 on the working rules card is "run it on a copy first", and having a place to do that already made is what makes the rule easy to follow at 23:40.