This wasn't too bad of a read: http://www.amazon.com/Electrical-Engineering-101-Third-Edition/dp/0123860016 http://www.amazon.com/Electrical-Engineering-101-Th

This wasn't too bad of a read: http://www.amazon.com/Electrical-Engineering-101-Third-Edition/dp/0123860016 http://www.amazon.com/Electrical-Engineering-101-Third-Editi... But, if you're not talking discrete components and just want something to act as more of a controller, these boards are pretty friendly: http://beagleboard.org/ http://beagleboard.org/ (slightly more advanced embedded controller) http://arduino.cc/ http://arduino.cc/ (pretty basic and awesome community) http://www.raspberrypi.org/ http://www.raspberrypi.org/ (never played with one, but another popular option) Read: http://www.josetteorama.com/hardware-hacking-for-ios-programmers/ http://www.josetteorama.com/hardware-hacking-for-ios-program... https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/featuredarticles/ExternalAccessoryPT/Introduction/Introduction.html https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/featuredarticles/Ext... You might want to come out to a SFHN event (https://www.facebook.com/groups/gosfhn/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/gosfhn/) and Hackendo (http://hackendo.techendo.co/ http://hackendo.techendo.co/)