Hey I live in deltona so not to far away from any of you, also there is a couple tech/hacker lab groups I've found in the area
http://familab.org/ they just started up a couple months ago and havent updated the page much
http://binrevmeetings.com/407/ has been going for some time and meets monthly at the altamonte springs mall.
I haven't actually gone to any of these things, nor know anyone in them (part of the reason for not having gone to them yet) but figured I would pass them on since I looked long and hard for them.
As for experience level, I play around with it and have a decent amount of coding experience (associates in comp sci) but seem to be stumbling on the circuitry. Current project is a cnc machine that keeps getting procrastinated.