A bit of background

As a bit of a primer about where I am coming from, I thought it may help to provide a bit of a background about what I know already and where my skills lie, as well as what I'm trying to do.

I'm a software developer with NO electronics experience or hardware experience beyond being about to config general computer stuff. The last electronics project I formally did was building a flip flop circuit (flashes leds) at a YMCA summer course when I was 10.

I can program in java (J2SE, J2ME) and a handful of scripting languages, no C and no assembler.

I have an Apple iBook which I want to use as my primary tool for these projects and I have access to a windows machine (win 2k) which I can use but don't really want to.

All of this means that I am after OS X/Linux based development options with minimal Windows stuff and I don't want to learn C or Assember.

As anyone who has done any PIC development will tell you, this limits what tools I can use and also means that I'm not your "normal" PIC micro developer and will probably run into many brick walls as I try to do certain things in this environment rather than a MSFT style setup.

Finally, I'm happy to spend money on components to build with but I want to minimise cost for software, programmers, chips etc if possible.

Next post I'll cover off where to start ( or at least where I started).