[kfse]

With respect to bowling alleys, for things like professional shows or food safety it's a bit more than "nobody got fired for buying IBM". The stuff's gotta be able to survive field conditions and not cost millions of dollars in refunded show tickets or spoiled foods. Manufacturers test and make themselves accountable for this. Cheap, customized modules work until they don't, and by then the engineer who put the custom system together in the first place isn't there to fix them. Who would you call when some quick-and-dirty integration code that was burned into these embedded modules without ever being put in a source versioning system fails in some weird edge condition? OP is an SRE, it's ok for him, but the average farmer or show operator doesn't have the skill.

[torginus]

Just because a guy wears a fitted suit doesn't mean he'll be good at handling your money. Likewise if you buy tens of thousands of euros worth of incredibly overbuilt teutonic industrial equipment in matching colors and snap-in cabinets doesn't mean the guy who builds the PLC program in ladder logic will be any good at it - or that the next guy will have an easier time troubleshooting it than if the whole thing ran on an Arduino scavenged out of an intro to robotics kit.

Experts know there is stuff worth spending on, and there's stuff like the ESP32 where no amount of money will buy you something better, and no amount of money will save you, if the guy building the whole thing is an idiot.

[berkes]

And also, there's certainly places and situations where you do want to spend tens of thousands on PLCs, buttons and wiring.

But not all of it needs this level, quality or insurance. A factory, farm, supermarket, stage, etc, is filled with tech. Many of it critical for operation, but just as many is non-critical. And either this "non critical" must then be acquired with the same level of quality, insurance and costs as the critical. Or it's simply not available - likely because there's no demand for it at this price point.

[berkes]

> be able to survive field conditions

you are right. But my point was that not all of needs to survive the same conditions.

E.g. in a theater, you want the high class industry grade rigs for the main lightning when you are running the shows. But during rehearsals, or during the development of the stage (which is somewhat iterative by nature), custom made stuff suffices.

And this is where currently, custom made stuff is deployed. Stage technicians use a remarkable lot of intermediate, custom made hard and software. Some 3d printed valve to find out if the idea of the valve works at all, before ordering a CNC aluminium version. Some arduino before ordering that €2k/month controller to find out if the separate controller is needed at all.

This allows a show to prototype and experiment before they order the €20k water-spraying system. Or allows them to rehearse for months without paying €5k a month for the high class lightning rigs and only rent those for the actual setup.

Its the same with my other examples. They fill a niche. They don't replace the entire existing market.

> the average farmer or show operator doesn't have the skill

Exactly! That's why there's an opportunity here. "We" software engineers tend to build a rediculous amount of SAAS that are aimed at other software-engineers, because that's were we notice the problems and opportunities. My advice always, is to look beyond your bubble. The examples above are real-life examples where currently "farmers", "show operators" and "fitter" already are cludging together solutions to solve their problems. IMO there's no better proof that this is a problem to research as potential tech startup, than non-techies cludging together tech to solve their problems.