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I don't have much hardware technical background (I'm a web developer / designer), (...) and all the components are already existing (...)

I would be interested to know why you feel that, without any actual training in the relevant fields, you can accomplish on the cheap what the actual researchers and engineers with funding and training and high-tech equipment haven't been able to?

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Building the prototype initially won't be that cheap, the final product will probably be cheap because the underlying technology already exists and as noted some are available commercially (and not very expensive).

I can't say why others have failed, I can only assume that it simply hasn't been thought of using the tools and technologies I'm thinking about. It's not a matter of creating a new technology, it's a matter of combining existing technologies in a way that might be unorthodox.

If you don't understand why others have failed, how can you claim to even understand the problem, much less provide its solution?

I can disclose the details privately, the underlying is complicated, but working (with plenty of examples), but the device I'm proposing isn't.

I would be interested to know what an actual engineer or physicist thinks of the details -- they're useless to me.

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