I'm working on software/tools for embedded field as well as trying to develop a wireless driver for 802.11p (automotive "WiFi").<p>It's actually not that expensive to get a prototype done with many of the hardware resource available for either free (as samples) or dirt cheap in small quantities.<p>Say you want to build a new Gaming Router, you can buy the underlying hardware to do development on for under $200 in quantities of < 10 and that will give you all the needed parts (board, radio, antennas, cables, enclosure, etc.) with the right specs to do just about anything you want. You'd then run Linux on it (OpenWRT is easy, comparatively) and wright the necessary software on top of that.<p>As the Ideas point #27, linked to by ig1, shows, most of the problem solving is in software.<p>Give you an example, I worked for a startup, 3 software guys (myself included) built a router that had all the capabilities of a Cisco small business-class router in 6 months from getting the hardware to being feature complete. No hardware people were involved. We used a crappy, 3 year-old platform that would over-heat (the SoC would start to literally smoke) if we ran more than 2 IPSec connections, but we were able to tune the kernel and our software to make it a viable product for a lot of businesses.<p>If you know your way around Linux, building embedded products is unbelievably simple.<p>If you or anyone else is interested in talking more about this field, shoot me an email (it's in my profile).