Not to leave a "this" comment, but I have nothing to add other than my agreement.

Sounds like a good plan to me. R&D is a big part of why I mess with this stuff, actually.

I would actually group that with circuit bending and rename circuit bending to
Homebrew Development & Circuit Bending

Or something along those lines, being that I can see a need for R&D as well a circuit bending, there is some cross talk like lowgain's projects, and neither are very popular, being that circuit bending only has 4 topics.

How about one more forum category for those of us involved in the development of hardware and software?  "Research and Development" could be where people could discuss what they have worked on, what others might want to see, troubleshooting bizarre problems with new designs, collaboration on open-source designs, etc.  Basically, anything not yet ready for human consumption can be discussed here.