Prerequisites

What you need before starting Make the Lamp Nod.

This course reuses the academy’s existing courses. It does not repeat them. Before you begin, you should be comfortable with the following, each with its authoritative source:

Required courses

You need	So that	Taught by
Kubernetes basics (Pods, Deployments, Services, ConfigMaps, controllers, reconciliation)	you can run and reason about the local runtime	Kubernetes for Open Engineering
MiniKube setup	you have a local cluster for this course	Kubernetes for Open Engineering — the canonical minikube home
Crossplane (XRDs, XRs, Compositions, Composition Functions, reconciliation, providers)	you can declare “what should exist” declaratively	Crossplane
Pico (Rules, Parser, Composer, Pico digital entities)	you can build a digital twin	Pico
Manifold (Pico runtime on Kubernetes, Wrangler channels)	you can run the Pico	Manifold
Home Assistant as a control surface	you can expose a human interface	Hello Pico on Home Assistant

Recommended order

Kubernetes
   ↓
MiniKube
   ↓
Crossplane
   │
   ├─────────────┐
   ▼             ▼
Definitions    Pico
   │             │
Conventions    Manifold
   │             │
Rules           │
   └──────┬──────┘
          ▼
    Home Assistant
          │
          ▼
    MAKE THE LAMP NOD

Where your own background differs, existing canonical academy courses take precedence over this graph.

Environment you will need

A workstation with MiniKube running (see the Kubernetes course).
Crossplane installed in the cluster.
The bin/pico Open Engineering CLI.
Home Assistant available as a control surface (see the Home Assistant lab).
For the simulation path: nothing else — this course is completable without hardware.
For the physical path: the PixStars anglepoise lamp (ESP32 + 74HCT245 + Dynamixel AX-12A). Hardware exercises are labelled and run entirely opt-in.

Simulation does not require hardware

This course is built simulation first. Modules 4, 7, and 12 work end-to-end using a simulated actuator, so you can complete the full course without an ESP32, a servo, or a lamp. The physical hardware path is an explicit, opt-in extension of the same architecture — nothing needs to be rewritten to move from simulation to physics.