App blueprint, advice please!

[Patrick <optomatic rogers com>]

Sorry for the long email but I really could use some help. I sell used 
lab instruments to people doing great work researching cures. The closed 
source programs to control and process data from these instruments often 
cost 20K. The people providing the software really abuse their legal 
positions. Writing an open source replacement has become an obsession 
for me.

I want to build an App to control dozens or even hundreds of instruments 
using different ports/buses (GPIB, Serial, Parallel etc) and I want to 
do some fairly complex data processing after. Then I want to be able to 
save the data in a database and/or in numerous formats.

The problem is, I am not qualified for all this, I am a part time, self 
taught programmer. I will need to pay others to bring this to fruition. 
I figure the best way to solve a complex problem is to break it down 
into  smaller parts. I was thinking about writing  small GTK/Python, 
GTK/C programs that can read from standard input and write to standard 
output. I was thinking that I could write customized BASH scripts for 
people to connect these small programs into a cohesive  App. When others 
get involved they could simply do the same and write more custom BASH 
commands, indeed in their language of choice.

I think using Bash as the App "nervous system" and Python/C as the 
muscle would make sense but I have never seen such an App, which makes 
me think it is probably a stupid idea.

I have been going around in circles for about a year now and still do 
not have a line of code to show for myself. This project may take many 
years. Any feedback on my blueprint would be really appreciated-Patrick