I'd like to do some hardware stuff as a hobby. Interacting with the real world is starting to sound a lot more fun than interacting with APIs. The problem is t

I'd like to do some hardware stuff as a hobby. Interacting with the real world is starting to sound a lot more fun than interacting with APIs. The problem is that I'm not sure where to start. Software was easy -- I'd make some toy games, or write a script to automate something. Hardware is less obvious -- there's nothing physical that's immediately fun or automatable in my life.