Why integration work still gatekeep robotics more than idea itself?

In my experience, adding one sensor to small robot still take whole weekend:) New sensor mean new driver, new wiring decision, calibration pass, maybe serial protocol nobody bother to document properly. For lot of people who want build something simple this is where project stall before it even start.

We work on a project that sits between sensor and compute and takes the driver and comms part on itself: you plug sensor in, driver gets generated for it, and clean data shows up on the other side for your stack. You still need to understand your own sensor and robot, no module fixes that. But building it made me suspicious about how much of sensor bring-up pain is real, and how much is just tax nobody bothered to remove.