How to Become a Full-Stack Hardware Engineer
Hey friends,
Every once in a while, a good engineer and person walks into your life (or returns to your podcast) and reminds you why you love being part of the engineering community.
For me, that’s Eli Hughes.
Eli wears many hats: teacher, embedded systems guru, acoustics nerd, PCB designer, startup partner, guitar player, and the founder of Wavenumber. But above all, he’s someone who knows how to build stuff. Real stuff. The kind of stuff that bridges the gap between the theoretical and a valuable working product.
He likes to call himself a “full-stack hardware engineer,” a phrase that’s stuck with me since the day I first heard it —and one I’ve repeated many times.
In our recent episode of The EEcosystem Podcast, Eli joined me to share how he’s leveraged NXP’s low-cost, open-source Freedom (FRDM) development boards to help engineers—from students to pros—level up, build faster, and learn what matters most: how to think across the entire stack and bring ideas to life.
Why FRDM Boards Matter (And Why You Should Care)
When Eli was teaching at Penn State, he stopped assigning textbooks and started assigning dev kits. Why? Because students who owned the tools treated them differently. They tinkered. They built. And they learned faster.
For under $25, these boards let you:
Prototype with pro-grade microcontrollers
Write real firmware in a professional IDE (or VS Code!)
Use built-in debuggers (just like in industry)
Integrate Zephyr RTOS and other modern frameworks
One of my favorite stories Eli shared during our podcast was about taking these tools to Guatemala, where students used them in a camera-based autonomous car challenge. It was like a one-week engineering bootcamp—and one of those students is now on Eli’s team. Now that’s impact.
From Bone Piles to Production
Whether you're working on an R&D test fixture, simulating digital microphones, prototyping, or just building your next portfolio project, the FRDM platform removes cost as a barrier, and the software stack is as open and powerful as anything I’ve personally heard about.
With all of NXP’s SDKs on GitHub and full support for Zephyr, these tools don’t just help you start projects—they help you finish and ship them.
Quick Takeaways (TL;DR)
Eli has leveraged FRDM boards as a force multiplier across many engineering roles due to their flexibility, low cost, and being powerful enough for real products.
You can prototype faster and smarter, with fewer excuses.
Great for students, pro engineers, and startup founders alike.
Bonus: they play nice with Arduino and other open-source tools.
Bottom line: It's never been easier to go from rough idea to working hardware.
🎧 If you haven’t had a chance yet, have a listen to the full conversation with Eli on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or better yet, watch the YouTube version where you can visually see several of Eli’s projects.
To check out the NXP FRDM Dev board website, click here.
Until next time—stay curious, keep growing, and always stay connected to The EEcosystem!
Best wishes,
Judy
PS: Have you use any open-source hardware such as FRDM, Arduino or Raspberry Pi? Tell us about it in the comments, we’d love to hear about it and learn from you!