[brokencog]

In today's world, a truly embedded device implies an original firmware driving all the hardware on the device.

These are not so common anymore. Most devices use existing OS platforms depending on the task. - time/resource critical? real time OSes - GUI/multimedia/telephony? Android - a platform for you app? Linux

Dev tools are very dependent on the hardware platform. C is common, as is C++. This is also very vendor specific. Intellectual Property add-on's for different micro's, etc.

You really should consult an expert to get guidance - you can probably do the work yourself, but making the right initial hardware choices matching the requirements will help get everything else right afterwards. Once you have hardware chosen, the rest will fall into place.

I work at a research and design firm, our projects are making custom hardware for people who don't have the expertise or time. Our most frequent customers? "We got this started and now ..." Save yourself the headache of getting half way into the project and discovering a problem you can't solve, then need to hire a consultant to fix it, which will entail redoing and eliminating features because the initial decisions won't support the desired outcome. Make a consultation, and get set on the right path from the start.

[tlubinski]

I already talked to a bunch of consultants and everyone has a different "right path". Hence my question here to get it in front of a lot of experts.