Picture this.
You’re driving down the road, music on, life is good. Then — out of nowhere — your car makes a sound that can only be described as “clack..clack..clack…” and dies completely. You check the gas. Full tank. Perfect.
At this point, two types of people exist in the world.
The first type calls a tow truck, drops the car off at the mechanic, and gets on with their day. Perfectly reasonable. Zero judgment.
The second type rolls up their sleeves, pops the hood, gets under the car, gets covered in grease and oil and something unidentifiable — and feels an almost unreasonable amount of joy when they finally figure out what went wrong. And when that engine turns over again? Pure, unscripted triumph.
Same broken car. Very different people.
Now swap the car for a robot.
These days, if you want a robot vacuum, you walk into Best Buy or Target, grab a Roomba or a Shark off the shelf, and it’s quietly cleaning your floors by Tuesday. Done. Easy. Completely valid life choice.
But some people — a specific, slightly unhinged subset of humanity — would rather build one from scratch. Not because it’s cheaper (it isn’t). Not because it’s easier (it very much isn’t). But because the feeling of watching something you built with your own hands actually work is, frankly, difficult to put into words.
This blog is for those people.
Who’s Writing This?
An amateur programmer. Self-described “mediocre” on a good day.
My electronics skills? First grade, at best. Mechanical skills? Roughly the same. Soldering? I can do it. Whether the result is pretty is a separate question entirely.
My budget for robotics is approximately “a few skipped Starbucks runs.” We’re talking Raspberry Pi territory. Arduino Nano. A $12 ultrasonic sensor. A secondhand RC car that’s seen better days.
I have no formal robotics training. No engineering degree hanging on the wall. No lab. No grant money. Just a laptop, a pile of inexpensive components, a borderline unhealthy curiosity, and the quiet but persistent belief that figuring something out yourself — even imperfectly — beats buying the finished version every single time.
I can’t fully explain why I keep doing this. I’ve never been someone who commits deeply to things. And yet, here we are.
What This Blog Is (And Isn’t)
Let’s be honest about something: this blog is not a course.
I’m not here to teach you robotics. I’m not qualified to teach you robotics. What you’re reading is a personal journal — a record of one person’s stumbling, occasionally triumphant, frequently chaotic journey into a world that is equal parts fascinating and infuriating.
Everything here is documented as it actually happened. The projects that worked. The ones that didn’t. The moments of “wait, that’s how it works?” and the moments of staring at a screen at midnight wondering why the sensor keeps reading zero.
If somewhere along the way you pick up something useful — a concept that clicks, a project you want to try, a mistake you now know to avoid — then consider that a bonus. A gift tucked into the chaos.
Why “MonkeyTaco”?
Because all the good names were taken.
And honestly? A monkey eating a taco while figuring out how to build a robot is a pretty accurate description of what’s happening here.
Thanks for stopping by. Good luck to both of us.
— MonkeyTaco