Viam 102

About

A script works fine on your laptop, but close the lid, lose the connection, or walk away, and it stops. This free, self-paced course, that runs entirely in simulation, teaches you to turn that logic into a production-grade Viam module: a "plug-in" for your robot that keeps working even when your laptop's turned off.

Using starter code, you'll generate the scaffold, wire up your control logic through DoCommand, add real dependencies and configurable attributes, and release it, first locally, then from GitHub with a cloud build that ships to every platform at once.

By the end, you'll be able to:

Turn a working script into a module viam-server runs, supervises, and restarts on its own
Implement a DoCommand API so any caller can drive your logic through documented verbs
Configure dependencies and attributes so behavior comes from config, not hardcoded values
Release and push updates over the air, the same way real robots in the field get maintained
Wire in sensors and hand the whole thing to a scheduled job, so the cell runs unattended

When you finish, your robot won't just work, it'll keep working on its own, without you clicking a thing.

For the best learning experience, we recommend starting with Viam 101.

See what people are saying about Viam courses

“Viam 101 is a good introductory course for people who can code and want to get started with robotic manipulation. It helped me understand how to think about robotic arms and ended with a working palletizing robot.”

Ashwani R.

Software Engineering Master Student

“This course showed what Viam can do in an easy to understand way. It was straight to the point, clear, concise, and interactive. Now I understand how to control robots over cloud.”

Park

Software Engineer & Founder

"It is a great course to see how the sim to real gap is being addressed and how amazing this space is going to be in the future.”

Ujjwal

Data scientist

“The course takes users through the basic principles of the Viam development environment and how Viam interacts with hardware. The course also clarifies how the hierarchy of components is used within systems.”

Dan P.

CTO

Recommended skills

Prior robotics experience is not required. You should have:

Completion of Viam 101 (or equivalent). You should already be comfortable configuring hardware in Viam and writing basic control logic.
Coding fundamentals. You know how to program.
Linux terminal basics. You know how to use a command line interface.
Comfort reading JSON. Viam uses JSON to configure your components and connections. You don't need to write it from scratch, but you should be comfortable reading and editing config files.

Course outline

1. OVERVIEW

2. The CLI and your machine

3. Create your module

4. Release your module

5. DoCommand

6. Add a dependency

7. Write place

8. Write pack

9. Attributes and validation

10. GitHub and cloud build

11. Pack on its own

12. Recap

Instructor

Brandon Shrewsbury

Brandon Shrewsbury is a Staff Technical Content Engineer on the Education team at Viam. He has developed hardware, software, and electrical systems for humanoid and quadruped robots for commercial applications.

Viam Education

Viam Education is a free, developer-first program designed to help engineers learn robotics and build on the Viam platform. Viam Education brings together a series of free online courses, live events, hackathons, and NYC office hours to make building robotics applications more accessible than ever. Viam 101 and 102 are available now; upcoming courses include software engineering for robotics, motion planning, computer vision, and more. Join the Viam Discord for updates on events, courses, and more.

Cost

Free

Runtime

120 minutes

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