As someone who builds and designs hardware for music as a hobby since a decade (but to a somewhat industrial standard): Unless you have history in hardware or someone with a lot of experience in it, I'd advice against it, if your plan is to earn a living. If your plan is to learn something, go on.
Hardware is, well, hard. You will figure out why things cost the amount they do, and you will wonder why, till you find all the tricks manufacturers pull off – with the most important one being economies of scale. There will be many prototypes, and sometimes you will end with something that is extremely cool, but entirely to expensive for what it does. Sometimes things will fail for unknown reasons. There are tons of regulations your device will need to respect (and you need to know them).
Why don't you start building the toaster in your sparetime and figure out whether that object is a thing that could sit on the right spot in the market with some automation? If the answer is that you lack the hardware skill, I would caution against moving forward unless you got the market side all figured out and know your product would work financially. Then this would be about finding a person that fills your gaps.
Hardware is, well, hard. You will figure out why things cost the amount they do, and you will wonder why, till you find all the tricks manufacturers pull off – with the most important one being economies of scale. There will be many prototypes, and sometimes you will end with something that is extremely cool, but entirely to expensive for what it does. Sometimes things will fail for unknown reasons. There are tons of regulations your device will need to respect (and you need to know them).
Why don't you start building the toaster in your sparetime and figure out whether that object is a thing that could sit on the right spot in the market with some automation? If the answer is that you lack the hardware skill, I would caution against moving forward unless you got the market side all figured out and know your product would work financially. Then this would be about finding a person that fills your gaps.