Most of these products are able to be built by hobbyists (in fact, almost all of them are produced by hobbyists). The reason most fail to launch to production is not only the extreme difficulty of scaling from prototype to manufactured production quantities of product, but also from 2020 onwards, the chip shortages.
For each product I've been able to actually touch, there are ten more I've heard about and wanted to see happen, but they just couldn't be made because certain specialty ICs are just not available to small-time hobbyists/makers.
I don't tend to review these boards because I want people to go out and buy them. I review them because I am inspired to try out new ideas and try my hand at new things (circuit designs, PCB design, etc.), and I figure maybe some other people can get inspired to try too.
I try to feature as much open source hardware as possible, because it actually is possible for people to get custom PCBs and put together their own versions of them.
For each product I've been able to actually touch, there are ten more I've heard about and wanted to see happen, but they just couldn't be made because certain specialty ICs are just not available to small-time hobbyists/makers.
I don't tend to review these boards because I want people to go out and buy them. I review them because I am inspired to try out new ideas and try my hand at new things (circuit designs, PCB design, etc.), and I figure maybe some other people can get inspired to try too.
I try to feature as much open source hardware as possible, because it actually is possible for people to get custom PCBs and put together their own versions of them.