Hardware development is hard, but if it's doable. Even on a budget.
A Ten years ago I started a hardware company that developed an advertising sign based on LED's. It was basically a motor with a stick of RGB LED's attached like a propeller. When you spun the stick and modulated the LED's just right you could paint full color disc shaped picture seemingly in free air. An FPGA would control and modulate the LED's (at the time it was the only affordable thing that could modulate a LED 400.000 times a second) The whole thing was online via an OEM phone module and would automatically update with ads, weather, etc. from a server where customers could buy campaigns online. Campaigns could of course be customised wo that you could get your ad only on the displays you wanted. I was in charge of getting this whole bandoogle from an idea to a product, and while it was hard I managed develop and bring it to market for around $200.000. Remember this was ten years ago where you had to tap directly into the a carriers network and hack around just to get an IP address, and five years before the iphone.
The point of the story is that sometimes small nimble companies that are set on doing something actually succeed. I'm not saying that these guys have solved all the problems, indeed it sounds from the article that there are some huge obstacles. I'm just saying that you should never underestimate the power of a small team whose only goal in life is to make something happen.
A Ten years ago I started a hardware company that developed an advertising sign based on LED's. It was basically a motor with a stick of RGB LED's attached like a propeller. When you spun the stick and modulated the LED's just right you could paint full color disc shaped picture seemingly in free air. An FPGA would control and modulate the LED's (at the time it was the only affordable thing that could modulate a LED 400.000 times a second) The whole thing was online via an OEM phone module and would automatically update with ads, weather, etc. from a server where customers could buy campaigns online. Campaigns could of course be customised wo that you could get your ad only on the displays you wanted. I was in charge of getting this whole bandoogle from an idea to a product, and while it was hard I managed develop and bring it to market for around $200.000. Remember this was ten years ago where you had to tap directly into the a carriers network and hack around just to get an IP address, and five years before the iphone.
The point of the story is that sometimes small nimble companies that are set on doing something actually succeed. I'm not saying that these guys have solved all the problems, indeed it sounds from the article that there are some huge obstacles. I'm just saying that you should never underestimate the power of a small team whose only goal in life is to make something happen.