Last December I started being interested in hardware development, and experimentation. I initially started with Arduino boards, but almost immediately jumped-s

Last December I started being interested in hardware development, and experimentation. I initially started with Arduino boards, but almost immediately jumped-ship to the ESP8266 devices - because they come with on-board WiFi support, and they're very very cheap. For me it had been years since I'd touched a soldering iron, and even then the things I'd done had been very basic. But I've had a lot of fun wiring up sensors to the devices, writing software that works in the tiny amount of space available (though much more space than I had when I was first exposed to programming, on a 48k Spectrum back in the early eighties.) You're not specific about the type of hardware, but I found this "IoT" style development pretty well documented, and fun. You don't need many parts, you don't need much time, and if you can code in C already you're not having to learn too many new things all at once. Right now I have a bunch of projects I made around the place. Some more useful than others. I expect I'll stop soon, but it was a fun diversion and no doubt I'll get back to it in the future.