I very much enjoy my career as a software engineer, but man there’s a side of me that wishes I had studied something where I could even begin to build something like this. Super super cool!
Probably don't start with a self-balancing cube as the first project though. Get an Arduino or ESP board, make some leds blink and go from there.
Find a project online that tickles your fancy, and then recreate that. If your thing doesn't work, you know it is something you did incorrectly as the project has been built successfully by others. During the course of that project, you will pick up on so many little things.
As an example, I had a project with more buttons than pins. Just something as simple as adding a few resistors to each button allows multiple buttons to be connected to the same pin. You just have test the voltage to know which button. Sounds simple, but I learned it from someone else's build.
Nobody likes walking through tutorials for tutorials sake, but it's still useful and rewarding if you can build something functional as a tutorial.
One of the things I find paralyzing about electronics is the fact energy is involved. Software just outputs garbage to the terminal if I screw it up. Circuits though? Isn't it possible for components to be literally destroyed, fires started?
What you'll find though is that, as a result of everyone before you making the same kinds of mistakes, there exists protection circuitry for almost everything you would want to do. For example, Lithium-Ion batteries are quite unsafe if you treat them without the respect they deserve, but that's what e.g. the DW01-P IC is for, and many Li-Ion charging ICs feature NTC thermistor inputs (e.g. the LTC4053) to stop charging if the cell is outside of some safe temperature range.
If you're really worried, a CO2 extinguisher and a bucket of sand go a long way.
It's to make sure that the environment is set up right. Is the device getting flashed? Does it start up at all? If you make a change (blink at a different rate), do you see your change?
https://twitter.com/thepracticaldev/status/76048012124142796...
Then you can make something that can turn off or on "real things" and work from there.
If it can do 120v, it can usually to 12v, and that's the next step - directly controlling components.
As a middle ground, I've settled on home automation & hobby electronic projects with some micro controllers like esp32, rpi pico etc. It's worth a try for anybody itching to build something tangible.
PS: the total BOM cost for this cube project was around 2500 Euros.
Somethings are purchased in packs of 10 even when needing 1 type of things happen too, so sometimes you have to divide the price by numbers used. Your comment also suggest you consider that nothing was necessary to repurchase or that the final BOM wasn't the 3rd iteration of which items were actually used in previous attempts. Pure R&D type hobby projects can be oh so much more expensive, but oh so much fun.
Middle English (denoting a designer and constructor of fortifications and weapons; formerly also as ingineer ): in early use from Old French engigneor, from medieval Latin ingeniator, from ingeniare ‘contrive, devise’, from Latin ingenium (see engine); in later use from French ingénieur or Italian ingegnere, also based on Latin ingenium
Would be great if we had a less war-like derived word for our profession.
"Genius" shares the same root.
It's dumb that we have these super computers in our pockets with long range antennas and in order to talk to each other they have to go through central intermediaries and paid access.
I want ad-hoc geographically local connectivity without service providers.
Do some research on VHF/UHF amateur radio. That'll give you a primer on why this is hard. Think line of sight, repeaters, traffic management.
Our current infra, even if it is paid, is cheap and miraculous.
Edit: I had a ham license once (probably still do), built VHF transceiver, only had asshats to talk to on it (locality related not technical).
I'm interested in LTE Direct but no one has implemented that in a phone. LTE Direct has range of 1mi which is the range of most low-power systems.
Ham radio gets longer range with higher power and better antennas. But only to the horizon with most people. Ham radio still depends on repeaters on high points.
I thought humanity would grow out of senseless aggression in 2024, but here we are. And yes, I am basing this on a specific real-world example of a country invading another country right next to mine, and my specific thoughts and beliefs.
The internet is amazing and stupid.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/hj0q8x/f...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJQZFHJzwt4 [2] https://github.com/remrc/Self-Balancing-Cube