This is significantly harder than most hardware hacking (it requires hardware-level interaction with a pretty complicated bus) --- at the point where you're doing custom FPGA work to get bus access...
This is purely my personal belief as a software developer with an EE degree, but I strongly believe hardware hacking skills are logarithmic in difficulty.
Those first few steps to get good with the tools are the hardest. Everything else past that is getting better with better - and potentially more expensive - tools.
Those first few steps to get good with the tools are the hardest. Everything else past that is getting better with better - and potentially more expensive - tools.