HOTIS Projects — Student Field Manual

Welcome. This site is your field manual for the Raspberry Pi AI + motor labs.

It is not an answer key. It is a reference — the same kind of documentation professional programmers use every day. Real programmers do not memorize everything. They look things up, piece the parts together, and figure it out. That is exactly what you are going to do here.

What's in here

Section	What you'll find
Getting Started	How to use the terminal, edit code, build and run programs, and shut down safely.
Programming Basics	Core C concepts — variables, printing, decisions, and math — with worked examples.
Reference	Quick lookup for every function and pin constant used in the labs.
Concepts	Deeper explanations of analog signals, PWM, ADCs, motor drivers, and how the AI pipeline works.
The Labs	Orientation and guiding questions for each lab handout.
Glossary	Plain-language definitions of every technical term.
Troubleshooting	What to check when something goes wrong.

How to use search

The fastest way to find something is the search bar at the top of the page. Try:

• Lab 2 — jumps to the Lab 2 page
• analogRead — finds the analogRead() reference page
• joystick part 2 — lands on the Part 2 section of the joystick lab
• PWM — finds both the concept page and every page that mentions PWM

Search indexes every heading and every word on every page, so you can search the way you think about the problem.

The one rule

Every page here teaches you how something works and gives you a worked example that is different from the lab task. You bring the pieces together and apply them to your own lab. If you could copy a block of code straight from this site and be done with the lab, the page would be wrong.

When you are stuck, the path forward is:

1. Look up the relevant reference page.
2. Read the worked example.
3. Think about how the same idea applies to your specific situation.
4. Try it, run it, and read whatever the terminal tells you.

That is how programmers work. You are a programmer now.