Bob wrote:
As always, this Group can over-engineer the thing for you :-) Or you
could just jump right in, whip something out and play with it until it
breaks.

An old contrarian saying comes to mind: "A month in the lab can save you an
hour in the library."

In this case I say it never hurts to try to sit down and try to make some
estimates, however rough. Otherwise yes, one can always start building
something and after enough trial and error construction and testing
eventually come up with something.