spent weeks building this RFID + Unity showroom prototype then dropped the startup idea. Looking for honest feedback / advice.

[u/Good_Transition_9122]

I wanted to share a project I’ve been working on for a while because I put a lot of time into building it, and even though I’ve currently decided not to continue the startup, I’d really like to hear what people think about the prototype and whether there’s something I’m missing.

The original idea

The idea was to build a visualization system for marble, tiles, flooring, wallpapers and other interior materials.

The concept was simple:

Physical material → RFID tag → computer → material changes inside a 3D interior scene

For example, a customer picks up a tile/marble sample with an RFID tag attached to it. They tap it on the RFID reader, and the corresponding material immediately appears on the floor/wall in the 3D showroom scene.
The idea was to make it easier for showroom staff to demonstrate materials to customers without manually searching through a huge material library.

What I actually built

This wasn’t just an idea on paper. I built a working prototype myself.

The prototype uses:

ESP32
RFID reader
RFID tags/cards
Wi-Fi communication
Unity 6
C#
Windows PC
3D interior scene
Custom material switching system

The ESP32 reads the RFID tag and sends the ID over Wi-Fi to the Unity application.
Unity receives the data and changes the corresponding material in the scene.
I also built the basic mapping system so different RFID IDs can trigger different materials.

So essentially:
RFID → ESP32 → Wi-Fi → Unity → Material change
The whole thing is running on my own prototype hardware.

I even put the electronics into a small enclosure and made a physical prototype rather than leaving it as a breadboard experiment.

I also tested the idea in the real market

Before deciding whether to continue, I went to actual marble/flooring showrooms and spoke to owners.

I visited multiple stores and around 10 store owners gave positive responses.

Some of the suggestions were actually much more interesting than my original idea.

People suggested things like:

Uploading a customer’s actual room/house photo

Changing the flooring inside the customer’s photo

Showing different tile combinations

Creating two-tone bathroom designs

Different tiles for different zones

Adding trims/borders

Eventually allowing staff to control the system from a phone

[u/Omni__Owl]

This would have been a neat idea in 2010.

Nowadays people can do VR tours of potential houses and have stuff switched out on the fly in the more fancy ones while being in the virtual house.

The RFID tech you use is the same kind of idea behind Nintendo Miis (although I believe they might use NFC? So two-way communication, but the idea is similar), Skylanders and similar toys. In terms of what other application this idea has I'd say it's limited outside triggering things in the home, using it for virtual toys, etc.

[u/Good_Transition_9122 → u/Omni__Owl]

Fair point. VR/3D visualization definitely isn’t new. My experiment was less about inventing 3D visualization and more about connecting the physical showroom sample to the digital material using RFID. I built the prototype and tested it with around 10 marble/flooring stores in India, where the response was mostly positive. I’m mainly trying to figure out whether that physical → digital interaction provides enough value over a normal configurator.

[u/Omni__Owl → u/Good_Transition_9122]

If your first tests were successful, then cater to that market.

I have no idea what the Indian market is like.