I believe so. In my country, having an iPhone was a sign of higher income. An average Android phone with a known brand is about 1K local currency, iPhone SE is around 5K and iPhone 11 Pro is around 11K. Average junior developer earns around 5K monthly. Nowadays, even people that can't afford proper food buy them second hand or with installments.
I, as an Android user, keep reading stories about how iPhone respects privacy and how it is more stable etc. Even though there is no add-on support for Firefox on iOS (for uBlock origin) and I know I won't be able to develop any app for my own iPhone (MacBooks are even more expensive around 20K) I still want to buy an iPhone to get rid of Google and its compulsory apps.
I know if I care enough about my privacy I can get LineageOS or something, I just want something that works and not owned by Google.
This does not completely contradict what you are saying but you can only export limited number of messages (10k or 40k can't remember the amount correctly).
Is there any specific thing you did apart from having a fiber and being close ?
I tried to set up my home PC as a server with tincVPN and X2go, i couldn't get a usable performance. Well, to be fair i tried using KiCAD remotely but even the XFCE desktop interface felt sluggish. I also had fiber on the three nodes (Vultr server, home server and my local machine).
I interpreted the parent comment as do all of the parts yourself. Pick microcontrollers, design the PCB with power supply, find the right toolchain for both microcontrollers and implement serial communication. Which is almost 90% percent of the job.
Also, does FPGA come to mind when embedded is mentioned? I always assume that FPGA is a whole another subject (only FPGA not the board part).
Edit: I'm actually curious l, i don't know how recycling supposed to work for electronics and how it can be a scam.