Few things are as exciting for a programmer as dabbling with electronics is. Especially if you have no experience with it. I knew some maths and physics and I k

Few things are as exciting for a programmer as dabbling with electronics is. Especially if you have no experience with it. I knew some maths and physics and I knew basics of electronics, but never dabbled with a soldering iron, let alone other stuff. AND THEN, I had a need for a simple motor-driven CNC-like machine that would drive my film camera around the set, like a small-ish, motion repeatable, crane. Motion Control system, basically, but DIY-I-have-no-idea-if-electricity-will-kill-me stuff. My dudes, let me tell you, the whole process was extremely laborious and extremely fun. Reminiscent of ye olde days of poking around Commodore 64 memory addresses to see what will happen. With microcontroler abundance today and a whole gallery of crap for them, like sensors and drivers and whatnots, you owe yourself to try it out. Just a friendly reminder, it's a bug that once you catch will fill your house with random electronics junk, oscilloscopes, PSUs and other stuff. Like photography, buying equipment never stops.