Quantity: 1 (including USB cable and pre-soldered pins)
Purchase link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D5LYFRQP/
Used in: Whole course

The Arduino Nano is a small, beginner-friendly microcontroller development board, which can be programmed via USB using the Arduino IDE. 
It features the ATMega328P 8-bit AVR microcontroller (the exact same chip used on the Arduino Uno R3). 

The pin headers on the board allow you to plug it directly into a breadboard, and the Nanos provided in the OPS kit come with the pins pre-soldered (Note: if you're buying your own Nano, check to see whether it includes pins or not!).

Pinout: See below for an overview, or click here for an interactive pinout and specs sheet. 

Quantity: 1
Purchase link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EV6LJ7G
Used in: Whole course

The breadboard is the quintessential platform for most electronics prototyping. Think of the holes in the breadboard as nodes you can connect component pins to. 

From Wikipedia: "A breadboard ... is a construction base used to build semi-permanent prototypes of electronic circuits. Unlike a perfboard or stripboard, breadboards do not require soldering or destruction of tracks and are hence reusable."

Layout: 

Quantity: 1 box (~140 assorted length jumpers)
Purchase link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CZRSPQSK
Used in: Whole course

These solid core flat jumper wires are used for connecting components on a breadboard. Unlike crimp-terminated wires, these flat wires are meant to sit directly on the breadboard, making your circuits cleaner and easier to troubleshoot. You can bend them if you need, but keep in mind, bending a wire too many times in the same place can break it!

Pro tip: The case your jumper wires come in is a great place to store the other small components in your OPS kit to keep them safe and prevent bending or breaking off their pins

Lengths: 

Quantity: 5 (assorted colors)
Purchase link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09XDMJ6KY/
Used in: Whole course

Light Emitting Diodes, better known as LEDs, are a modern marvel. They're everywhere, and serve many roles from control panel indicators to vehicle headlights, to lighting up each pixel in modern (OLED) smartphone displays. 

LEDs are polarized components—like one-way valves in a circuit—so current will only flow through them in one direction. You need to connect the positive pin (anode) of an LED to the higher voltage in your circuit, and the negative pin (cathode) to the lower voltage, or ground. 

It's important to remember, though, that on their own LEDs can be easy to burn out if given too much current. To protect them, always connect a current limiting resistor in series with each LED (470Ω works fine for 5V circuits like we use with the Arduino). 

Pinout: 

Quantity: 1 (including servo and various arm attachments)
Purchase link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MLR1498/
Used in: Module 3, Module 4

A servo is a type of motor that allows specific positional control of an arm or gear. It gets power from the 5V and GND pins on your Arduino, and has a third signal pin which controls the angle the servo rotates to. 

The servo comes with some screws for mounting it as well as a smaller screw for attaching the arm to the gear hub. For OPS projects using the servo, we do not recommend installing this screw; the plastic arm fits tight enough to the gear hub with friction for our needs.

Pinout: 

Quantity: 5 (assorted colors)
Purchase link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C7211PJ/
Used in: Module 3 and 4, optional for previous modules

These buttons have normally-open contacts, meaning that the switch contacts are disconnected normally, and are bridged (shorted) together when the button is pressed. 

Be careful not to break or over-bend the button pins when using it in your breadboard!

Pinout: These buttons have 4 pins, but only one internal switch. The two pins across each side are connected internally, while the pins are switched diagonally like this:

Quantity: 1 IR LED, 1 IR Phototransistor, 1 holder
Purchase links:
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/everlight-electronics-co-ltd/IR333-A/2675571
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/everlight-electronics-co-ltd/PT334-6C/2675650
Used in: Module 3, optional after

Together this LED and phototransistor can emit and detect inferred light that's invisible to the human eye. 

While our eyes can't see the infrared spectrum of light, many cameras can just barely detect the upper edge (wavelengths just below red light). To check whether your IR LED is connected correctly and is turned on, you can look at it with your phone camera (you'll have to zoom in pretty close). If the IR LED is on, you should see a faint pink glow right on the anvil inside the LED.

Caution: The IR LED is very easy to burn out! Always connect a current limiting resistor in series with it (470Ω). The full 5V directly from your Arduino can drive enough current through the LED to permanently damage it. This is because IR LEDs have a lower forward voltage than other colors.

Pinout: 

The IR LED has the same pinout as a normal LED. However, the phototransistor is different:

Quantity: 1
Purchase link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MCK7JMS/
Used in: Whole course

A potentiometer is a variable-resistance component. 

You can think of a potentiometer as two resistors in series, with the center pin being the node between the two resistors. When you turn the knob, a wiper arm inside the potentiometer moves across a strip of resistive material, and the two outer pins are connected to either end of the strip. The resistance between the center pin and each of the outer pins varies depending on where the wiper is on the strip, but the resistance across the outer two pins (the total resistance of the strip) will always add up to 10kΩ. For example, if the knob is turned three quarters to the right, the resistance from the left pin to the center will be 7.5kΩ (because there's more resistive material between the wiper arm and the end of the strip) and the resistance from the center pin to the right pin will be 2.5kΩ. When the knob is centered, the resistance between the center and each outer pin will be roughly equal (5kΩ)

We'll cover voltage dividers in class, and show you how we can use the potentiometer as a voltage divider to use as an analog control input for the Arduino. 

Pinout: 

Quantity: 5
Purchase link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08B3VCK42  
Used in: Module 3, optional for other modules

You'll learn about capacitors in Physics 2 and ECE 200, however for now all we need is to think of them as energy storage devices. They're like batteries that charge up over time, but only store a very small amount of charge. 

This capacitor has a very small value, making it useful for decoupling (which you'll learn about in later ECE courses) or switch debouncing. Switch debouncing is a kind of signal filtering commonly used for push buttons, which we'll cover in Module 3. 

Pinout:
There are different kinds of capacitors with different properties. Because this is a ceramic capacitor, it is not polarized. You can plug it in either way around.

What are those numbers?
Capacitors typically use a 3 or 4 digit labeling system to denote their value (just like surface mount resistors do), where the first 2 (or 3) numbers are normal digits, and the last number is the multiplier (number of 0s to add on the end). However, because ceramic capacitors hold such a small charge, the base unit is pico Farads (pF). So "104" = 100,000 pF, or 100 nF, or just a measly 0.0000001 Farad. 

Quantity: 1
Purchase link: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/rubycon/6-3ZLH220MEFC5X11/3562950
Used in: Module 3, Module 4

You'll learn about capacitors in Physics 2 and ECE 200, however for now all we need is to think of them as energy storage devices. They're like batteries that charge up over time, but only store a very small amount of charge. 

This capacitor has a large value, making it useful as a "reservoir" to store a large charge. We'll use it whenever we use the servo motor, and you'll learn why motors often need "reservoir" caps in Module 3.

Caution: Connecting a polarized capacitor in reverse will damage the capacitor over time. In some scenarios (which you won't encounter in OPS), this can cause a catastrophic failure of the capacitor, shorting its pins, and causing the electrolyte inside to ignite (producing very stinky and toxic smoke)!

Pinout:
There are different kinds of capacitors with different properties. Because this is an electrolytic capacitor, its pins are polarized and must be connected correctly.