I’ve been loving embedded programming on various boards suited to IOT and I want to keep at it. It’s been amazing to discover that I can throw up a LoRa networ

I’ve been loving embedded programming on various boards suited to IOT and I want to keep at it. It’s been amazing to discover that I can throw up a LoRa network, get some controllers sensing and actuating, talk to them and observe them from the web, run their data through a message broker, etc. and have this little ecosystem of hardware doing things I want or need. I’ve just started piping some of the data online so I can observe and interact while on vacation in the future. I’ve always just bought stuff that kind of does what I need, had a vague understanding of how it works, and left it at that. Now I can build a lot of things I need from components, and it’s sometimes even cheaper! I understand so much more about how things work. It’s really cool to be able to say I actually know what’s happening in a Bluetooth speaker and that I could (rudimentarily) build one from a Bluetooth-capable microcontroller. From code to power source to amplifier and wiring up speakers, I actually get it! Sure it would look and sound awful, but to me it’s amazing. I’ve got a hydroponic garden that’s very well automated (dosing pumps for nutrients and pH levels, light schedules, pump schedules, heaps of environmental sensors, sensor calibration routines, etc), a mushroom fruiting chamber (way dumber than the hydroponic system), weather station, and I’d like to start getting into the basics of robotics next. An IK algorithm would be very gratifying to implement. It’s so cool to use programming to make real things that interact with the world. I learn so many new skills, get better at programming, and actually make useful stuff. I haven’t been so excited about a new skill in a long time. Part of me wonders if I might need more education to pursue a new branch in my career, but another part of me is pretty sure I don’t have any special talents and it’s probably best left as a hobby.