It really depends on what you want to do, electronic design is not (IMHO) much different then the ideas in software design. My background is EE, my day job is c

It really depends on what you want to do, electronic design is not (IMHO) much different then the ideas in software design. My background is EE, my day job is circuit design including firmware and in my spare time I do web projects, RoR mostly and some PC software and I think alot of the same principles apply. There are many ways to design the circuitry as the same for software, many designs will be 'better' and many will be quicker to market. But you can hack hardware together just like you can for software (its just much harder to upgrade a circuit board design). If you have never done much hardware design I don't think I would recommend buying a cheap microcontroller and going to town will all the design. It would probably be much more advantageous to get a development board and try things out first. Sites like sparkfun.com have a lot of different offerings. These also give you a schematic of the circuit to start with. As someone else noted it really depends on your needs and goals, I am assuming this is something complicated enough to warrant a uC. Good Luck!