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Ask HN: Balancing SaaS and Hardware Skills–Experiences and Tips?

7 points by cryptography ↗ HN
Hi HN, I’m a software engineer with 10 years of experience who’s recently started learning hardware through a 4-month electronics course. I’d love to hear how others have combined software and hardware skills, both for professional growth and personal enjoyment. Any advice or experiences to share?

8 comments

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fred_beep
I know one guy who created a device that that be programmed to show anything you want throug api. For example, it shows how much money you made on stripe today. You put it on your desk and it uodates on auto. That is one way to combine hardware and saas
cryptography
I can see how having real-time updates right on your desk could be both motivating and practical :D Thanks for sharing this idea
ohong
I've met a few others in the same boat (SWE exploring hardware) and would love to chat sometime to bounce ideas if you're up for it. Feel free to dm me!
RedCardRef
Can you share a link to that electronics course? I am also kind of in the same boat right now. I need to use off the shelf components mainly Pi Pico and a seperate module.

Specifically, I want to get RP2040 or the newer RP2350 with another module onto a single PCB. Currently I am soldering the pins between the two modules.

I assume this should be fairly trivial since soldering and having two seperate off the shelf PCBs is what I want to eliminate.

Following this discussion!

cryptography
Hey! I’m not an electronics expert myself, and unfortunately, the course I’m taking isn’t available online. However, designing a custom PCB can definitely help you avoid soldering between separate boards. If you’re new to PCB design, tools like KiCad or Eagle are great for creating your layout. There are plenty of tutorials available that cover integrating modules and designing PCBs that could be really helpful for your project.
mttm12
U like me. İ scrabing all Pcb design Microcontroller Signal integrity Circut design Altium/kicad Keyword in internet. İ follow ~200 website from rss.

Reddit, hackernews, bilibili, youtube, all edu website, medium.