[jstanley]

This sort of comment is actually a rather obscure compliment.

If you make something that's obviously shoddy, nobody confuses it for a serious product. Nobody is telling grandma that her knitting isn't as practical as a waterproof jacket from J. Random Outdoorswear Company. Nobody is telling the electronics newbie that a blinking LED isn't actually of any use to anyone. Everybody has nothing but positive encouragement.

But if you start to make actually really good stuff, requiring an enormous amount of skill and experience, you instead get "cool, but actually not quite as good as the nearest commercial competitor".

If you're so good at your hobby that people are comparing you to the literal state of the art, you're doing something right.

[loxias]

I love this comment for similar reasons as the sibling comment to this one :)

In the late 2000s (pre iPhone), it just so happens I was lucky enough to work for OQO -- the "Rolls-Royce of Handheld Computing". This project is a DIY attempt at building an OQO, and I'm IMPRESSED.

You must making pretty good stuff for someone like me, who did this professionally, to think "Oh, our product is obviously still better, but wow, this comes closer than I thought!"

Things have come a long way in 15 years!

[johnwalkr]

I love this comment! As someone who works in hardware in a demanding industry, although not in consumer electronics, this example obviously has a long way to go to compete with a real product, because you have big hurdles in moving to integrated designs instead of integrating devkits, and in moving to manufacturability at scale. I don't think that's even the intent but I can see it at least as a niche product. I only say this to set up the next statement.

This thing is great to show vision and usability, and I'm more excited by this than a lot of dead-end things I've seen presented as a bunch of requirements and if you're lucky, renderings made by a lot more than one person and 3 weeks.

And think about the software world, it's understood that framework X makes a great example but needs to be replaced by microservices Y, and also understood that people exist to make that happen.

It's not like grandma's knitting, but it could be something like MVP software to get a cofounder and an angel investor.