In case you're crazy enough to want to build hardware, here's a good "diary" type of article by John Evans describing all sorts of problems that one entrepreneur (David Argentar) faced while attempting to get his solar energy startup off the ground.
Choice extract:
My student engineers and I have run into a
littlecrippling problem with the prototype light concentrator array we're building: the bare solar cells are too fragile to handle. We've broken most of ones we had trying to mount them, even handling them with tweezers. So, I'm looking for ideas on what to try next. I figure somebody who reads this must have some experience working with fragile things. …anybody got other ideas?
Obviously, they should switch to Rails. Or make an iPad app.
