HN Academy

You can just buy the microcontroller and do it yourself from there. Here is a nice example someone did of a simple LED flasher [1] with just 6 parts:

1. An ATmega ATTiny85 microcontroller

2. A socket for that processor

3. A coin cell battery

4. A holder for the battery

5. A resistor

6. An LED

and some wire and solder.

What going with an actual Arduino or Arduino compatible gets you, from a hardware point of view, is a bunch of ready made attachments. For instance, suppose you have some sensor that needs an odd voltage and has weird timing requirements. It will be a lot more convenient to get a shield that has that sensor, and a voltage converter, and something that deals with the weird timing and presents a simple I2C interface to your code than to have to do all that yourself.

There are some EdX courses that you might find useful.

From UTAustinX, "Embedded Systems--Shape the World" [2]. This is a lab-based course where you do 13 or so labs using a TI Tiva Series C Launchpad. That's an 80 MHz ARM Cortex M4 board. Cost for the hardware for the course is $35-$55, depending on if you want to do a couple of the optional labs.

From UCBerkeleyX, "Electronic Interfaces: Bridging the Physical and Digital Worlds" [3]. Another lab course

From MITx, "Circuits and Electronics" [4]. The online version of MITs 6.002 introductory electronics course.

[1] http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=200590.0

[2] https://www.edx.org/course/embedded-systems-shape-world-utau...

[3] https://www.edx.org/course/electronic-interfaces-bridging-ph...

[4] https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-electronics-mitx-6-002x-...

I am looking forward to two embedded system courses in EdX.

Electronic Interfaces: Bridging the Physical and Digital Worlds: https://www.edx.org/course/electronic-interfaces-bridging-ph...

Embedded Systems - Shape The World: https://www.edx.org/course/embedded-systems-shape-world-utau...

EdX has got some nice electronics courses: https://www.edx.org/course

Between, I am from compsci background

⬐ carlosgg

I took Embedded Systems last spring and it was great. Students interface to the outside world by programming an ARM microcontroller using C language. The staff and fellow students provide tremendous support on the boards. Here's the syllabus:

http://edx-org-utaustinx.s3.amazonaws.com/UT601x/syllabus.ht...

Here are some projects from last year:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyg2vmIzGxXGS3bdIkTF4...