When I started tinkering with microcontroller, I looked at a lot of the projects like Arduino. In the end, I decided to just get some PIC chips and a breadboard

When I started tinkering with microcontroller, I looked at a lot of the projects like Arduino. In the end, I decided to just get some PIC chips and a breadboard and learn it from the ground up. One of the reasons that I did so was because I thought long and hard about what happens if one of these open source hardware projects get's into the same issues as many software projects get into. I did end up picking up an Arduino board to play with later on, but I am really glad that I learned hardware at a lower level than the prepackaged boards, that way I am not tied to the power struggles of the hardware manufacturers. As a side note, I also found that designing the hardware portion is as rewarding or in some cases more rewarding than the final solution that the hardware will be used for.