@johntech I don’t think you have any reason to apologize. This forum is for everyone, not just developers. We welcome (respectful) feedback from newcomers, even when it’s not possible to execute all the ideas.
It might be a good idea to open a new thread if you’re taking the discussion away from the original topic, but I think you would find people here would love to give you feedback and help with your project. I actually am working on something similar using Particle boards and MQTT.
Check out this thread for some best practices on interacting with this community.
Please don’t judge this entire community on one comment. Most of all, welcome!