So flipping my original question around a little, how did you get into learning these things?
I've always wished I had taken a hardware course or two while in University. I can't seem to think of anything practical enough to keep my motivation while I deal with learning about all the actual hardware bits.
I mean, I've written code for microcontrollers before, but it's hard to beat something where all the building blocks are already done for you; leaving you only the job or assembling them in the product you want.
If you know "normal" programming (I do web dev), it's relatively easy to get an Arduino and start copy-and-pasting example code until you've got something cool. The syntax itself isn't too complex, and most of the really hard stuff already has a library built for it.
Arduino code can also be used on the ESP8266 / ESP32, which is an amazing, <$2 (shipped!) microcontroller that's Wifi-enabled.
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So flipping my original question around a little, how did you get into learning these things?
I've always wished I had taken a hardware course or two while in University. I can't seem to think of anything practical enough to keep my motivation while I deal with learning about all the actual hardware bits.
Honestly, I just used ESPHome for all of this (https://esphome.io/).
I mean, I've written code for microcontrollers before, but it's hard to beat something where all the building blocks are already done for you; leaving you only the job or assembling them in the product you want.
If you know "normal" programming (I do web dev), it's relatively easy to get an Arduino and start copy-and-pasting example code until you've got something cool. The syntax itself isn't too complex, and most of the really hard stuff already has a library built for it.
Arduino code can also be used on the ESP8266 / ESP32, which is an amazing, <$2 (shipped!) microcontroller that's Wifi-enabled.