You don't have to necessarily sell your designed kit,
Heck, you don't even have to build it! Just the act of setting design constraints and then working through the issue and comparing countless datasheets and parametric searches etc, you can learn a heck of a lot.
Dave.
I think your spot on here Dave, and I am a little disappointed with the discouraging approach of many of the other old hands. A beginner does not have to be doomed to the penance of fun-way kits as the only way to learn. Those are great for some but not all beginners are at a primary school level.
Sure many may need to tone down their expectations of an initial project but going through the steps you've suggested would suggest have most sane individuals coming to those conclusions without the condescension of others.
Many would be familiar with the open source multimeter thread some months back, this was a healthy exercise even if the outcome for many was to decide such a project was unlikely to ever be viable. Lots of reallyclever design ideas were presented, shared and compared, lots of the old hands shared gotchas and pitfalls, and some of the newbies put forward creative alternatives for consideration. All up it was a worthwhile learning exercise, despite most concluding the product would likely fail at this time.
Jeez,Unc!
I'm sorry if I sounded condescending,I meant to be downright discouraging!
Seriously,though,how many times have we had people on this forum,who ask for help over & over for
their project,trying one suggestion after another,without understanding in the least the results of each trial,until eventually everybody realises that they don't have a clue & cease to respond.
At that point,their reaction is often:"They're all mongrels on that forum" so they go to another one,& it starts all over.
Surely it is not a lot to ask,that people spend a little time to get an understanding of series & parallel circuits,Ohm's law,& a few other useful things,before launching themselves into Electronics design.
Although I am ancient,I well remember attempts to design things when I didn't have sufficient knowledge.
At that time,I could at least read a circuit diagram,& build stuff from a magazine project,but I still knew very little.
They were in almost all cases," disasters,& I do not look back on them as "Good learning experiences" at all!
The failures were all due to laziness, such as taking guesses on the number of turns on an IF coil in a Shortwave Superhet Radio I tried to build,because the right way "looked hard"!
The thing I didn't understand back then,was experienced people can "guess" & be fairly close,whereas inexperienced people will not be close.except by chance.