The projects we’ve done (and intend to do), have a scale to them. Certain ones will naturally be better suited to those who are just beginning on their maker journeys. While we would never stop anyone from trying out the more complex projects, we wanted a way to explain the possible complexity of a project without using words like “beginner”, or “easy”, or even “expert”, or “advanced”. We felt like that language had the chance of dissuading people from even trying them at all.
Those words aren’t bad, and we even use them in certain places across this website, however we wanted to eliminate all possibility of fear and second-guessing. We felt like changing the way we rate our builds was a good way to do that.
We came to the conclusion that we wanted a point system. Any shape could have been used to demonstrate this, but being a maker website, we felt like we should add our own flair to it. We spent a small amount of time figuring out what component could be used, and we eventually settled on servos.
We use servos in almost every one of our builds. They’re versatile and easy to recognise, and they do look cool, as far as equipment goes.
In case it is needed, below is our Servo Difficulty Scale, shown alongside a difficulty scale that may be akin to something you’ll recognise.
 | 1 Servo | Easy |
 | 2 Servos | Moderate |
 | 3 Servos | Intermediate |
 | 4 Servos | Fiddly |
 | 5 Servos | Adept |
 | 6 Servos | Complex |
We take many things into account when deciding the amount of servos to award a project, like; how long the project takes, the kinds of tools required, the equipment and parts needed and how easy they are to obtain, the overall complexity of the project, and how tricky/fiddly the project may be for a new maker.
Further down the line, we may end up introducing more servos to the scale. It would allow us to go into more detail with the project difficulties. As of right now, though, 6 seems to be the sweet spot.