What’s the best path into hardware projects, as a software developer?

Comments

[Co-op Source]

Most of the hw engineers at my company are working w/ FPGAs. There are many dev kits from the FPGA vendors that you can use to control LEDs, displays, memory, sensors, etc. The primary languages they use are Verilog and VHDL so a book on those will be needed to get up to speed... and start thinking in parallel!

[Andy Johnson]

It's all bits, right? So keep things simple at first. Don't try to reverse engineer the protocol for a proprietary hardware driver first. Blink an LED. Then blink an LED from the internet. I can't count how many times I've pulled my hair out first, and an oscilloscope second. Get a cheap multimeter and poke around the circuit. Arduino is great. But don't neglect old school logic from transistors and ICs.

[Alex]

When in doubt - Arduino! Although it depends a ton on your idea of hardware project. Arduino studio (or whatever it's called) seems pretty beginner-friendly, and if/when you graduate, Atmel Studio is my favorite embedded IDE/platform (and free!).