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.
Cycling.
You can certainly do it on an 300€ bike, but who would want that if you can pay 300€ for the helmet alone.
Electronics / microcontrollers.
Took just a few months to go from, “I can make a wifi connected weather station for like $20 in components!?” to “oscilloscopes cost how much?”
Has there already grown a noteworthy Arduino/ESP Community on Lemmy?
There are quite a few but none are super active.
You can get a cheap oscilloscope that uses USB and your computer. https://www.sainsmart.com/products/sainsmart-dds-140-40m-200m-s-virtual-oscilloscope-logic-analyzer
Not that I have an electronics problem
I’m really happy I don’t have enough space for that stuff. Otherwise I would be poor. It’s hard enough to keep myself from buying another old computer.
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I would love to read about this $20 weather station! Do you maybe have a link?
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 boardAll 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.
Just an fyi bmp280 is not real temperature but an estimation based on air pressure.
PLANTS, LOTS OF THEM
Mechanical keyboards. Picked up a keychron for cheap. Decided it was too loud, decided to change the switches. Then the keycaps. Now I’m ordering barebones keyboards and artisan custom keycaps. This shit is an addiction.
I remember buying a Razer BlackWindow from a local electronics store and now here I am, waiting 2 years for a group buy for frog keycaps that I paid $150 for. It never ends.
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True but it feels so good to type on these things! Got a NOS Hi-Tek with space invader keys a few weeks ago that blew me away and now I really need to resist seeing what else is out there.
I’ve had 3 boards.
Atrix Sniper Keyboard. $25 at GameStop, resoldered switches to upgrade it from Outemu brown to red
Then later I bought an white rk61 with blue switches, put a stronger spring inside the switch on the spacebar (why not?)
And then of course I had to get a $10 keyboard at the thrift store (Punkston TH61S, unbranded optical yellow)
edit: I also spray painted the plate blue on the RK61
selfhosting/homelab. Originally started just using retired gaming PC parts to build a server. All it cost was the power to run the system. Years later and with more things/content I have, I just added a 5x 18tb hard drives and 3x 8tb. Just the 5 18tb drives was like $1500.
Solving the Rubik’s cube
You either get into speedcubing and get high end cubes to improve your performance, at least of the official categories and a couple must haves like the Mirror cube.
And / Or
You start collecting cubes and puzzles of all kinds and shapes (yes, even non-cubical :o). You start to acquire custom cubes built by hand by artesians or niche brands.
For the love of what’s good in this world, stick to that one budget MJC set of competitive cubes until you are actually 10 or 20 seconds behind the world record
I personally love the feel of the MoYu RS3M MagLev. And I think it was like 15 bucks.
And don’t be afraid to go to chinese distributors like ziicube.com Saves a lot of money by going directly to the source and buying in bulk if you can, to alleviate shipping cost.
Same. It’s my current cube. I tell everyone I meet if they can learn how to solve one, they can have my cube. So far I’ve given out 6
I couldn’t give away my RS3M, it’s my baby ATM.
I have a Tornado just sitting in my basket going “BUY ME, BUY ME!” but I’ve only just yesterday got a sub 40 second solve so it’s staying there. Plus I’m broke.
I have a pretty big collection of cubes . My most expensive is a $100 9x9
Coffee.
I blame James Hoffman entirely.
Within a year I went from:
Drinking instant coffee at home, but really enjoying “proper coffee”
To
Buying a cafetiere (~£15) + preground coffee
To
Buying a Nespresso (~£60 on offer) + pods
To
Buying a budget espresso machine (~£120) + preground coffee
To
Wasting my money on a cheap manual coffee grinder (~£50) + beans
To
Immediately replacing it with an entry level Sage grinder (~£170)
To
Buying an entry Level “proper” espresso machine (~£700)
It took me a good 2-3 weeks of practicing and dialling in before pulling a good shot of coffee that I’d actually want to drink, but by that point it was also about learning a new skill, learning how different aspects of the process affect the end result and learning how to make all sorts of different espresso-based drinks.
My girlfriend thought I was nuts at first, but a year or so later even she agrees it was worth the investment. I still for the life of me can’t get the hang of latte art though.
The problem is now though that I’m a waaaay more critical of coffee from coffee shops, because I spent a long time making bad coffee whilst learning!
Similar but different : tea! You go from cheap bagged tea to going down the rabbit hole of loose leaf variations, temp control kettles, brewing vessels and brewing styles.
Even low-grade Dragonwell is eyeopeningly expensive. And nothing tastes quite like it.
It tastes a ground up $20 bill soaked in hot water ;)
Have you reached the gaiwan stage already?
I have! …then full circle back to grandpa style. I still use a gaiwan from time to time on the weekend but I like bringing a container up with me at my desk without needing to refill constantly.
I agree but disagree on it being expensive.
I have a temp controlled kettle that only cost like $40, some really nice french presses from thrift stores, and a couple really nice pots ranging from iron to ceramic but they were a one time cost about 10 years ago.
You can cold brew tea in a big mason jar and strain with a dollar store strainer even.
The scale for weighing was expensive but is super useful in a kitchen anyways.
So the expensive part of Tea is mostly just the tea but that varies all over and is down to taste preferences and marketing. And per glass is pretty negligible in cost. As long as you aren’t buying like the aged fermented monkey picked stuff.
Tea is a lot about patience and remembering organization of steps to get it perfect and that can be prohibitive but not cost if you don’t want it to be.
You raise good points. The expensive part for me was the discovery aspect. Once you know what you like it’s not bad but the learning part…trying all the different greens and oolongs and pu’er and black teas - that was a little nuts at the beginning.
Now I have about 10 varieties that I like for different occasions and I stick to those and it’s not too bad.
Biggest splurge for me was an ember mug. Im a little embarrassed by how expensive it was, but honestly no regrets. Perfect temp tea for hours.
Espresso is the line I won’t let myself cross (and I don’t have the counter space lol), but the $350 for the Kinu M47 was hard to swallow.
Plus side, it’s also a great espresso grinder if I do ever eventually head down that road.
Me too. Besides, I have just enough space for my AeroPress. Gettin a machine of any type would make it difficult for me to do other things in my small kitchen.
Besides, I’m not entirely sure I would appreciate the flavors I can get out of coffee using an espresso machine. I’ve tried a bunch of different drinks at several cafes and I just don’t see the value in owning a machine like that. AP coffee is just fine or even really good as long as you use the right type of beans.
I can’t believe I answered “board games” to this before. Yes, espresso wins it over. I just got an espresso machine for my 10th anniversary (price too high for me to be willing to admit). And here I have a wishlist of $500+ in “devices” for it.
Like you, I’m about 3 weeks in and just now getting my burr grind just right for that perfect 26s shot. Luckily my vendor was giving out a free badass scale. It keeps telling me how bad my shot is.
I still for the life of me can’t get the hang of latte art though.
Ditto. I just got my first “correct emulsified foam” today. Usually I end up with hot milk with hot whipped milk on top.
This is why I appreciate my “tea hobby”. For minimal investment, you can get a lot of bang out of your buck, and it doesn’t need to go as hog-wild as fancy coffee or wine or beer.
Dry loose leaf tea is just relatively cheap to be snobby over, compared to coffee and other things.
Get an electric kettle for $40-70, a $20 teapot…and you won’t spend more than $100-$200 year for some tea (if you drink a LOT of it) that is head and shoulders better than ANYTHING in the grocery store.
Like, you can have a giant improvement in the quality of your tea for not too much.
You CAN go hog-wild and spend lots and lots…there are fancy expensive teas to be had…but even if you don’t it’s still way better than grocery store teabags.
I do enjoy my tea… I think it might be my next rabbit hole to go down. I just got back from a business trip to China, and was gifted a few different black and green teas, loose and bagged. Really enjoying them so far.
I really want one of their…uh… Tea tables(?), which has a tap and temperature controlled kettle and drain built in. I’d drink so much tea…
Don’t forget to get that pretty Fellow Stag just because it is pretty and no other reason whatsoever
Time to start roasting your own coffee!
Before diving into this hobby I was worried that I might not be able to tolerate the type of coffee that happens to be available to me at some random gas station or cafe along the way. That hasn’t been a problem for me yet, but how about you?
Having spent some time experimenting with my AeroPress, I have learned to notice some basic flavors and notes, but I wouldn’t call myself a experienced coffee taster yet. I can tell the difference between light and dark roast. Trying to tell the difference between two expensive coffees is usually very difficult for me, so I guess gettin an espresso machine might not be worth it yet.
I might not be able to tolerate the type of coffee that happens to be available to me at some random gas station or cafe along the way. That hasn’t been a problem for me yet, but how about you?
Not really been an issue for me either. I’d say I notice more now when a coffee is slightly under/over extracted, but I’d probably have noticed it tasted 'weird" before and just not known what was wrong. That said, I’ve found it to be very rare. A lot of places just use quite forgiving dark roasts that are a LOT easier to make than more lightly roasted beans.
Oh, so that’s why I can’t seem to find any cafe making good light roast. Every place seems to love dark roast, super dark roast, ultra-mega-hyper-dark-still-smoking-black-hole-shade roast.
About a month a go I went to my local cafe and asked if they’re selling coffee beans. They had some options, so I bought a bag of their lightest. Back home I tried it out and it tasted rather dark to me. I compared it with a cheap store brand that is labeled as roast level 1, and the taste difference was significant. Their lightest is probably like level 3 or 4, which is nowhere near what I’m looking for.
Homelab (running home servers). Especially since I’m in Canada so I pay out the ass for shipping. Got into it purely out of interest for server administration, programming (computer science in general really) and the desire to experiment on my own hardware, but I’ll have you know I have a total of 48 processing cores and 30 TB of storage running my personal fileserver and “private cloud!” Though not relying on the likes of Google for data storage and “cloud” services is a massive genuine benefit!
I also run BOINC and Folding@Home on the excess computing power in the winter, essentially “donating” it to science, which is perfect because my house only has electric baseboard heating anyway so I’m consuming the same amount of electricity for heating either way, and the electricity sources are mostly renewables where I live! The home office is toasty all winter, if kind of loud.
Tinkering with electronics. Like, breadboards, integrated circuits, transistors, microcontrollers.
I’ve got a tacklebox full to bursting with components and parts worth probably close to a grand.
I used to be there… now I’ve got three sets of shelves from Costco full up of boxes, bins, trays, tools, bits, and bobs. Finding used electronics bench devices like power supplies, multimeters, oscopes, and soldering stations is an ongoing effort to do at a reasonable price point.
Self-hosting apps / homelab
Getting used enterprise gear is not prohibitively expensive, but the electric bills balloon very quickly.
I currently bought an old desktop from a friend that I use as my Homeserver.
- I bought 3 HDDs for storage
- I rent a VPS
- I rented Proton to host mail for my domain, but switched to netcup groupware because that sucked.
- Some domains
- Electricity
Wow I thought it was way more.
One time costs: ~500€ Monthly costs: ~15€ Plus electricity, but I have solar. I assume it’s about 150€/year
But I’m a cheap selfhosted, but eventually, I will have a huge ass Enterprise Level Rack in my basement.
We need a r/homeDatacenter on lemmy!
Pretty sure I’ve seen a few home lab communities already, one on lemmy.world even
Already aware of some of those! They are really cool.
But homelab aint datacenter (yet) ;)
Data hoarding and self-hosting every service under the sun.
I just spun up 3 Tdarr nodes on my proxmox cluster to tame my media collection.
I’m not sure it can get worse than bird watching. Completely free to start. Then you are like “man I wish I could see that bird over there” so you buy some binoculars. Then you think “dang this bird is moving too fast I still can’t identify it, maybe I should try photographing it”. Two months later you’ve spent 10k because bird photography is apparently the most intense kind of photography. Turns out photographing very tiny things that move very fast from very far away is very difficult and the lenses you need start at thousands of dollars and go up to tens of thousands of dollars. That isn’t including the camera body, which you probably want very fast autofocus on, along with bird eye tracking, which hardly comes on any cameras at all.
Yeah…
Houseplants.
It started with a little green in the living room and suddenly turned into a full grown, humid, highly poisonous indoor jungle that’s thirsty as fuck. And it turns out that exotic plants, fancy pots, growing lights, different types of soil for different species, fertilizers, and dozens of liters of water every day are somehow expensive…
Edit: yes, I love it
this happened to us, mostly the wife… we went from 3 Ikea cabinets full of hoyas to putting a 6x8 outdoor greenhouse IN the house. it’s insane.
Film photography. Started with a camera I got for free, and $20 worth of film. Quickly spiraled into many cameras that I bought or inherited, and so much money on film and development
Running.
Was supposed to be the cheapest way to get exercise. You can do it right from your front door, no gym subscriptions, no specialized equipment (some people will tell you you don’t even need shoes), and it’s far and away the best time-value exercise I’ve ever found. You can get away with like 20 minutes 3-4 times a week and be doing great.
Well, turns out I love running and I love distance running so I’m now putting up enough miles to need new shoes 2-3 times a year, a nice Garmin smart watch and heart rate monitor to track my progress, sign-ups for several long-distance races each year, shorts, socks, you get the picture.
Could I do it cheaper? Yeah. But at the end of the day it’s a hobby and I like it
You realize it’s an addiction when you intend to do 5k. Realize after that Strava didn’t work properly on your watch and then you end up doing a second 5k because the first 5k didn’t count.
Finish marathon
Legs on fire
Garmin says you only ran 25.6 miles
Have to run another half mile at race pace (so you don’t ruin your stats) to make sure you get credit for a marathon
Every so often you read something where someone perfectly summarised your own thoughts and experiences.
I was running for a couple of years , and my knee started to give me problems.
I went to an orthopedic Dr, and his advice was to take up swimming and if I wanted to keep running that I should hold on to his business card because someone needed to pay for his kids’ college.
I stopped running soon after and avoided surgery for a decade, but it still caught up with me. Knees are definitely cheap with for-profit healthcare.
I felt the same way about running until I started getting into triathlons. Watch out for that trap; races are at least $200 each, and road bikes ain’t cheap!
