I have a few ongoing projects - one is a music block toy for my kids (assemble blocks together that makes a song), another is a IoT shelf which syncs inventory.

I have a few ongoing projects - one is a music block toy for my kids (assemble blocks together that makes a song), another is a IoT shelf which syncs inventory. Someday I'd like to also make a large scale pen plotter. Embedded software is obviously a lot like backend in the day to day, write code, design docs, etc, but instead of trying to keep up with all the things like serverless functions, Kubernetes, Cassandra, etc etc we get to think about things like microcontroller peripherals (timers, serial data, power management, interrupts) and supporting a variety of hardware configurations with testable code. It isn't a chore yet! My only problem is as a staff engineer only half my time is spent actually doing coding!