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What is your "inexpensive" hobby that turned out to be expensive/ you gradually invested lots of money into? (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by plactagonic@sopuli.xyz to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Edit: so it turns out that every hobby can be expensive if you do it long enough.

Also I love how you talk about your hobby as some addicts.

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[–] Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago

Mine is pretty basic but is built on the shoulders of giants. Also that $20 was from pre-pandemic / pre-chip shortage prices. I'm guessing it's more like $35 now, or maybe high $20s from ali express.

I use Home Assistant for home automation. It has a now official addon called ESPHome for easily configuring esp devices and adding them to Home Assistant.

I bought some cheap dev boards off amazon and thankfully they worked
- an esp8266 microcontroller with IC2 headers and a microusb port already onboard
- a bmp280 that measures temp, humidity, and barometric pressure
- a lux sensor with a plastic dome over the top
I soldered them together on a prototyping board

All the components were supported by esphome, so I just needed to write the device config and then flash the devboard via esphome (in a web browser) over the built in usb.

I 3d printed a housing for it, but you can also buy boxes. It needs airflow but also needs to stay dry. You can use a spray sealant to help avoid corrosion from ambient humidity. I skipped that step because I want to see how quickly it becomes problematic... and I should probably check on that.