Maybe 4-5 years ago I wrote this. https://github.com/Gehn/JustADistributedVPL (I uploaded it to github ~2 years back on the request from a friend who wanted to use it.)
It was a hobby project to control the raspberry pis around the house by giving me a visual programming language to connect programmatic modules in a graph via a web UX, including allowing networked hops between nodes. IFTTT for IOT.
I thought I was being derivative even at that point given yahoo pipes and some similar concepts, but having seen the IOT control/home automation boom since then (and the many products who later moved far past what I had been thinking of), I do feel like there might have been opportunities to be ahead of the curve there.
However I don't think I missed out because the bar for execution is so high in hardware, and the winners are most often large incumbents with networks effects. Like, even if I pushed out a product, I neither would be able to establish protocol standards nor would I have services like Alexa on top of it. Then of course is economy of scale.
Ultimately, when you are building a developer oriented product even an MVP needs to be confidence inspiring, which needs money and people, didn't have much of either. And couldn't get much investor interest just on the basis of alpha - they either need traction, or someone to vouch for you.
