Speaking as someone who's reviewed for NSF before, I'd have expected this grant to also include resources to get the product to market, which I'm assuming you haven't done.
But they might be funding for marketing costs and other soft expenses. Nice project and a great jaunt for a year or two. I’m sure they will learn a lot. Good for them.
The real screwy thing here is it’s like they did no market research or customer testing here. There are already a multitude of cheap, sophisticated, highly effective solutions in this segment that are much less user hostile than this gadget seems to be .
The SaTC does have a Transition to Practice (TTP) option. However, this research is CORE (see the text "CORE" in the project title [2]). The objective is to write research papers.
[1] https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2022/nsf22517/nsf22517.htm [2] https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2245223&His...
That’s amazing!
(Also, their device is supposed to be tamper proof. That sounds more difficult)
At any rate, good for them. It will be a great learning experience at least.