Thread: What to do next?

For embedded stuff, I started of with a Microchip PIC dev board, then built my own, played with it, then moved to STMicroelectronics ST7's, then AVR Micro's, and the last ones I've been playing with are ARM & Renesas microcontrollers. I've also played with Xilinx FPGA's, which are fun as they are programmable logic, rather than a sequential program.

If you want to play with ARM development, rather than buying an ARM development board, I would suggest purchasing a handheld commercial console such as the Tapwave Zodiac, Gamepark GP32, or the upcoming Gamepark GPX2, all of which allow you to write your own applications and games, and come with useful documentation to get you going, along with free compilers.

You can also use other handhelds such as the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, but these are usually more difficult simply due to the reason that the manufacturer never meant them to be used by individuals, and so you normally have to modify the device in some way, and learn how the console works by reverse engineering, so certainly not recommended for beginners.