If you're buying super cheap micros you need to learn circuit design and layout. It's not that hard compared to programming, just different. Below assembly, yo

If you're buying super cheap micros you need to learn circuit design and layout. It's not that hard compared to programming, just different. Below assembly, you need to understand busses, signaling, and maybe some analog circuit design. I'm very interested in this stuff as well but I haven't gone deep enough to build my own board. It's a whole different game. Still fun but if you're not an assembly programmer with experience in signal processing and circuit design there's a lot to learn.