The concept of the Uncanny Valley comes from robotics, its hypothesis says that when humanoid robots move and feel almost, but not completely like the real thing, they can be more off-putting than the robots that have less human likeness.
Working on quite a few hardware projects these days, I started to wonder (okay, say it out loud: worry), that there’s an uncanny valley for hardware projects as well. My theory goes such that hardware projects that are almost, but not completely professional can be more off-putting (or underwhelming) than less advanced, clearly maker projects and prototypes.