Build Your First Smart Gadget
Stop just looking at gadgets and start building them. Learn how to control electricity with code and sensors to create your own interactive inventions.
Like Duolingo, but for Build Your First Smart Gadget. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 11 levels across 2 sections, about 22 minutes end to end, roughly 4 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Making Things Move and Glow and Interacting with the World. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in Build Your First Smart Gadget
- Electricity must return to its source to flow
- LEDs are polarized and only allow flow in one direction
- A gap anywhere in the path stops the entire flow
- The long leg (anode) must connect toward the positive power source
- The negative terminal is the 'return' for the loop
- Flipping the component fixes a 'backwards' break in the loop
- The necessity of a closed path for electricity to flow
- Identifying polarity in components like LEDs
- Unrestricted electricity can generate enough heat to melt or 'pop' small components
- Resistors limit the amount of current flowing through the loop
- Holes in the same row are physically connected by metal underneath
- The center notch prevents the left side from touching the right side
- The protective role of resistance in a circuit
- A switch acts as a movable bridge in the loop
- Pressing the button closes the physical gap between two wires
- Understanding the internal connections of a breadboard
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives Build Your First Smart Gadget the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
Picture this: you have a tiny LED light. Unlike a simple wire, this component has a specific 'front' and 'back' for electricity. What is this property called?
Get it right to open this lesson and 10 more in the app.
Where Build Your First Smart Gadget takes you
- 1
Making Things Move and Glow
- The Loop of Power
- Giving the Circuit a Brain
- 2
Interacting with the World
- Sensing and Reacting
- Powering the Invention
2 sections · 4 units · 11 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
Tomo is in ChatGPT
Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.
Add Tomo to ChatGPT- What to ask
- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
- What you get
- Quick questions with instant feedback, hearts and stars, ready to play in about a minute.
- Where it goes
- No sign-up to start. Connect your Tomo account and your streak carries on in the app.
You pick the voice
Build Your First Smart Gadget is taught in the The Storyteller style: every lesson is a story. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
More Technology on Tomo
How Electrical Circuits Work
Demystify electricity by building, measuring, and troubleshooting real circuits. Learn how voltage, current, and resistance interact to power everyday devices safely.
The Flow of Power: Basic Circuits
Stop guessing and start building. Learn to direct the invisible force of electricity to power lights, motors, and your own inventions.
Hands-On Electronics
Demystify how everyday gadgets work by building and understanding circuits from the ground up. Learn to direct electrical currents, wire components safely, and read circuit behaviors.
How Robots Work
Discover how machines sense the physical world, make real-time decisions, and move with precision. Learn the core principles behind autonomous navigation, mechanical manipulation, and feedback control.
Electronics and Coding with Raspberry Pi
Stop just reading about circuits and start building them. Learn to control the physical world with code, from blinking your first light to designing smart home gadgets.
The Flow of Power
Stop guessing and start building. Learn to see electricity as a flowing current you can direct, control, and use to bring your own gadgets to life.
Start Build Your First Smart Gadget today.
Download Tomo, search Build Your First Smart Gadget, and play your first lesson in under a minute.