No Need to Buy a Dev Board First: He Moved 8 Popular Dev Boards into the Browser for Free Teardown, Assembly, and Soldering

Everyone who learns hardware probably spends their first money on the same thing: buying a development board.

Someone tells you to spend $500 on a kit first, while others get stuck after just buying an Arduino Uno. Movez posted on X about a website he built with Fable 5.2 that brings 8 common development boards into the browser, free, no registration required.

The site is called Robotics Lab, at robotics-lab-app.vercel.app. It opens with a 3D Arduino Uno R3 that you can rotate, zoom, and hold Ctrl to flip to the back.

The 8 boards: Arduino Uno R3, Nano, Mega 2560 R3, ESP32 DevKit V1, NodeMCU (ESP8266), Raspberry Pi Pico, STM32 Blue Pill, Raspberry Pi 4 Model B. From 8-bit AVR to ARM boards, it basically covers the entry routes a beginner is most likely to encounter.

Each board has about 15 labeled parts. Click on the ATmega328P, and the camera flies to the chip, telling you this chip stores the program. Click on the USB-B connector, and it explains it handles both power and program transfer. Digital pins, analog pins, UART, I²C, SPI—what each is—are all there.

There's also a mode called Assembly. The board is disassembled, parts are laid out in a tray, and you have to put the chip, connectors, and pin headers back onto the corresponding pads, then solder them one by one. Only after soldering is the board complete.

The Workbench is another scene. Click one pin, then another, to wire them. The platform checks if you connected them wrong. Follow the tasks to light up LEDs, read sensors, and drive motors.

Movez emphasizes one point in the post: all 3D models are code-generated, with no pre-made 3D files and no photos. The description at the bottom of the site is more specific: geometry, traces, silkscreen, markings—all drawn by code in the browser. Rendering is based on three.js and WebGL.

The practical significance is: no modeling assets means no asset downloads. The fact that 8 boards can fit into one page and still run smoothly relies on this.

The site also has a comparison table. The MCU, clock speed, Flash, RAM, GPIO count, analog inputs, wireless, logic level, and price of the 8 boards are all in one table. The pitfalls beginners most easily fall into, such as 3.3V boards cannot directly take 5V signals, have a dedicated line written below the table.

Note that some parts of the site are still under construction. The workbench says "still being set up", assembly and quizzes depend on 3D models, and if WebGL is disabled, it will show a message that it can't be viewed. Courses, comparison table, and quiz questions work normally.

Ronin wrote a long article in September, "How to become a Robotics Engineer in 6 months", in which he gives a judgment: robotics is one of the least crowded high-value skills in tech right now. His roadmap starts with electronics fundamentals, suggesting spending $0 first on Falstad and Tinkercad to learn Ohm's law, then buying a multimeter and kit.

What Movez's thing solves is the first half of the same starting point: before spending money, first understand what each part on a board does.

Ronin also points out a failure mode in the article: many people watch hours of videos but never actually connect a circuit. The 3D site cannot replace a real soldering iron and breadboard, but it makes "taking apart a board" no longer require owning one first.

The 5V logic of the Arduino Uno R3, the 20mA per-pin limit, which pins have PWM—this information doesn't just surface on a real board. On the 3D model, a click gives it to you.

Before spending your first money, break a virtual one first. The cost is zero.