My co-founder and I were both software engineers who got into hardware almost 6 years ago.

We had both played with a bit of arduino or hobbyist stuff in the past, but dove right into EEG and neurostimulation.

Hardware is hard like software used to be hard. When we think of hardware, we're usually caught up just in the electrical chip, transistor, firmware, IO mentality.

Maybe it's just because of what we're building (https://affectablesleep.comm) but we also have to factor in mechanical design, electrical/mechanical interfaces, material science (electrode sensors), etc.

I've learned power management isn't always about, how long does my battery last, but also, how do micro-fluctuations in voltage during use impact other sensors or other operating systems.

Hardware, for us at least, has been a significantly larger footprint than we initially would have expected. It isn't just hardware, firmware, control app. For us it's been the above, plus data-quality tooling, firmware CI, in-factory provisioning and security, the list seems to go on and on.

It's a new challenge, and has been a very fun one. It does remind me a bit of the early days of the web when we'd write our own web-server, DB connection logic, etc etc.