Seven Tips to Start Hardware Hacking Today (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Hey everyone, Mart here from Assembly, and if your Xfeed is looking anything like mine, then you'll know that hardware is the future. OpenAI posted about how hardware is the new software, and Gary Tan from YC is even looking for a lab manager at YC. Here at Assembly, we've been doing a ton of hackathons on hardware. We built some Furbies and installed voice agents on them. I've been working hard on a vintage phone that I've turned into a voice agent, and so we really do feel that hardware is the final frontier for voice AI to be everywhere. And so in light of this, I wanted to share some of the tips that I have as a beginner into hardware hacking for you if you're maybe going for hackathons or just interested in hardware in general. So my first tip is to not be afraid to be a beginner. You know, everyone starts somewhere, and in fact, most of my hardware experiments started off looking very dodgy and very sketchy. Buy all the parts that you think you need, go back and forth with the AI, ask questions. The beginner phase is really the most exciting because then you get to see if hardware is really your thing or not. You can build a simple experiment like making LEDs flash, playing around with Arduinos or ESP32s. You can build something that solves a problem in your life. I've seen people build dashboards with little screens for their daily to-dos or just the weather. It's really just an exploration phase, and so powered by that kind of beginner excitement, go ahead and build something as a beginner, make mistakes, try and try again. That's really how you really get to decipher if hardware is what you really want to go into or not. And that leads me into the second tip, which is to get one of these starter kits. My desk is kind of a mess right now, but I basically bought one of these beginner kits. They're all over Amazon, they're all over whatever platform you buy your things on. You can get them fairly cheaply for like 50 bucks, and it comes with a lot of the pieces that you need to build that first project of yours. So my kit, for example, comes with a speaker, it comes with the LED bulbs, you're probably going to get a couple of breadboards in there, jumper wires, and it kind of relieves that kind of mental load that you have to think of what you have to buy. You can just get a kit and get hacking as soon as possible. Which then leads me to my third tip, which is to be strategic and resourceful with the things that you have at hand. You don't have to spend too much money to get started or to at least complete your first project, as long as you think out of the box for getting the materials that you need. So for example, you might get a used soldering iron just for your first project to see if it works. Maybe you have a friend or a co-worker who has a lab at home, you can borrow their equipment to get started as well. You can look up secondhand marketplaces or even consider buying your parts from China instead. Of course, that comes with a longer shipping time. This way you can save some money before you really get into a deep end like I have. I'm already considering buying multiple parts just because this hobby is so exciting. You can also consider using the places around you like a school lab, a makerspace, a library, maybe a neighbor's 3D printer. There are lots of ways that you can save money while you're still a beginner and then make bigger investments as you start to build more projects. Now, coming from software, you might think that hardware is easy, but there are actually lots of fundamentals that you need to learn, which is my fourth tip. With AI these days, you can easily ask all the questions you have about circuitry, about electronics. There are a ton of resources to get you set up with the basic fundamentals that you'll need when building your circuits and putting it all together. I found it super helpful to have a multimeter with me at all times because this way I can read the resistance on certain parts. I know what I'm doing and I can also check my work to see when things go wrong. You don't need an electrical engineering degree just to get started, but as you learn more, you'll eventually dive deeper into these resources and build a real expertise in hardware engineering. My fifth tip is to use AI as your co-pilot. So I was quite surprised as a beginner how good the AI was at interpreting my circuits and interpreting my parts. The AI has access to really the whole internet, which is a huge database of information about all of these experiments. Many of the projects have been done before. It's fairly likely that the AI is able to generate boilerplate software and firmware to get you started, which will work while you're still a beginner and at least get your projects done. I mean, this is literally what OpenAI is pitching in their posts, and so they think that GPT is a good model to use for hardware engineering, and I recommend that you give it a try and see if it works. My sixth tip is to find a community of hackers by going for more hackathons and making friends online. I know it can be kind of daunting to join a community like this as a beginner, but trust me, the first time is the hardest and it gets easier the more you go. Don't be afraid to ask for help because everyone's been a beginner at some point, and I found that, at least in my experience, people in hardware are very friendly and very willing to help. It also works as a form of accountability because when you work on a project with someone else, you kind of ensure that you actually finish it, which is a huge barrier to getting out of that beginner phase. And the last tip is really to just have fun. Hackathons are about building together with the community, making friends, finding like-minded people, and so sure, while there is a prize and maybe someone might win, go out there and just meet people, have fun, have a great time, and that's going to keep you motivated to keep hacking on hardware. And if I could just put in a gentle plug for our Discord community as well as our socials, that's where we announce all of our upcoming hackathons, and so if you follow, you'll get to know first. And so I hope that was helpful for you if you're an aspiring hardware engineer. I guess from one beginner to another, I wish you all the best. Bye.