From time to time I like to go to CrowdSupply.com to see what people are up to, and I feel like it's never been busier with new projects that are tackling consumer-grade problems. With projects like the Tangara music player, the MNT laptops, there have been several well-funded crowdsourced projects delivering products that, a decade ago, could only ever be executed by a well-funded company with deep expertise in hardware.

It's cheaper and easier than ever to create your own PCBs with complex designs and industrial-grade manufacturing. With free open-source software like KiCad available, and low cost PCB manufacturing – including part placement – even someone like myself with zero hardware engineering skills has found a use for a custom PCB and had it printed a few years back.

The abundant availability of powerful microcontrollers, some built on top of yet more open platforms like RISC-V means that, truly, it is today possible to build a complete hardware and software stack that is independent from any proprietary vendor or platform, which is a remarkable achievement.

And on top of that, the general availability of 3D printers, both of consumer and manufacturing grade, means that you don't need to be a machining specialist or an injection-moulding engineer to prototype and iterate on cases, parts, assemblies, and accessories.

To me, this all seems to indicate that we're at a point where anyone with the patience and skill can build hardware products and ship it to customers, without having to ship a large quantity of units to make it viable.