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.
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.
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.
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.
Good soldering gear already makes me wince. I couldn’t imagine paying $500+ for an oscilloscope.
Fortunately I’m more interested in the software side of things… thank God nobody charges for programming toolchains anymore.
Same. I’m lucky for software to be my hobby/career. It’s practically free. Contrary to popular misconception, it doesn’t require any kind of special or more powerful hardware (for most dev, at least). Maybe $150 for a second monitor, for sanity, but that’s not actually necessary.
…I mean, I do have good hardware too, but that’s for my gaming hobby, not my software hobby.
To be fair, if C++ or Rust is your thing… let’s just say I’d have a Threadripper if they weren’t five grand.
I once had to (repeatedly) compile a C++ codebase on some Lenovo shitbook. It ended up being so infuriating (thirty seconds, minimum) that I wrote a few load-bearing shell scripts to
rsynceverything to my desktop, build it, and copy the binary back… which was ultimately about five times faster.Man, I wish I could have just used MicroPython for that project.
yeah I got a fancy lab power supply but stopped at oscilloscopes, those things are expensive.
it’s still cheap and fun to do a lot of stuff, but now I wanna build a sound-card based oscilloscope.
I haven’t bought an oscilloscope yet either, but I keep window shopping.
Knitting. Super cheap to start, you can pick up a set of needles and some acrylic yarn for under $20. But when you start getting into nice yarns and bigger pieces, you are spending hundreds of dollars on yarn alone for a blanket or a sweater. And you want nice needles in all sizes as well as all types (double pointed, regular and circular)… more hundreds of dollars.
Moral of the story is if a friend knits you something with nice yarn, please appreciate it. Lots of effort and thought went into it.
Just started crocheting, and I’m just holding myself back from buying all the yarn, it’s gonna get bad
Whatever you do, don’t go looking for yarn on Etsy. Fuck, I’ve said too much.
TOO LATE.
My mom knits and she spends way more time unraveling thrift store finds to salvage the yarn than she does actually knitting stuff.
Oh yes. Yes. I went to the Edinburgh Yarn Festival a few years back. I live nearby, but met people there who’d come from all over - Europe, Japan, the US. All three days sold out. The yarns were so beautiful! And oh so expensive. But you were there in person, fan-girling with you favourite dyers and pattern designers! Spend spend spend. The nearest cash machine ran dry. Such an expensive hobby. But I can’t stop.
I’ve found my people… as I cry into this shawl project on my lap, of merino fingering yarn I paid to have imported because “you want to support small yarn producers” telling myself, “it’s not soft enough. Just throw it away and buy that cashmere/silk blend that you know feels like butter.” 🫠
Mechanical keyboards. The next one is my endgame, I swear. Just one more groupbuy for those keycaps. It never truly ends.
That’ll only happen if you build your own boards and stuff. Not like me! I just got a simple Moonlander with some custom keycaps, dampeners, and red switches rather than my initial brown. After that, I realised that the Kinesis Advantage 360 is the way to go, so I’m fully settled now, not like everyone else … right?
And then it turns out some horrendously ugly piece of plastic (like the Kinesis Advantage 360) is better for actually using.
My first “good” keyboard is my current one, which is a Ducky One 2 Mini with MX Cherry Browns I bought really cheap 2nd hand. It has been almost 2 years I’ve been using it and I recently got a coiled cable for it. I was cleaning it the last time and I started to wonder how hard it would be if I wanted to change my switches and fell into a hole where now I want to desolder everything and install sockets. My spouse got lubs for his stabilizers (he has a Filco Majestouch 2 Ninja with MX Cherry Blues) after watching a few videos… We just started diving into this deeper and deeper after using keyboards from the time cherry still had the patent up for so long. Yeah, we are screwed.
One IBM Model M that I got for free and I’m set for life.
Ditto on that. Thought I was content with my first ergo but one thing after another led to an artisan keyboard with CNC backplates and plates, 2 year long group buys, and artisans to match the whole theme that costs the same as the keyboard. At this point I’m so far in the hole that my artisan keycap collection cost more than my keyboard collection.
It’s just another one of those hobbies that has many moving parts so you can optimize and personalize each part.
mechanical keyboards go two ways, you start shelling out for way overpriced cncd metal or wacky boards or you become a pcb designer and make a board that could be used for camping
I never got the appeal of mechanical keyboards. If you actually have to type all day, a proper flat keyboard like in the old MacBooks ('09-ish) is way nicer and costs much less.
That’s extremely subjective. I definitely don’t feel like flat keyboards are nicer. These days I use a split keyboard with an angle and I will never go back.
Your experience is not universal. I type all day and if a client/employer gave me one of those flat keyboards I would quickly quit and go dig ditches instead.
If you actually have to type all day, you get into ergonomic mechanical keyboards 😎
Growing cannabis (legal here in Canada)
…anyone can grow weed. Growing GOOD weed is an art.
I unintentionally grow weed because I made some tincture for grandma.
Now it just grows on my garden and I can’t get rid of it.
One of it’s many nicknames is ditchweed for a reason. It’s a weed like any other. The US spends millions per year burning it out of ditches on the side of the road all around the country.
I’d be happy to burn it for them!
A little bit at a time!
We call it “The Granny choice” variety.
And trust me it is horrible, for tinctures it is great, but for anything else not.
In Germany we will be allowed to grow some for private use come next year. I have no idea what to get yet, but I will just plant it in a planter in the garden and hope that it works I guess :D
I hope you’ll be able to get seeds and strains imported from the US and Canada. I smoked weed in Germany while I was living there in 2015 a few times and it was the worst weed I’ve ever smoked. It tasted weird, smelled bad, and didn’t even get me high. When I asked someone about it they were just like “weed isn’t as strong here as it is in the U.S.”
There are European based seed banks. Also they share a border with the Netherlands.
I think that’s still up for debate. Let’s see. But I haven’t been smoking for quite some time, so maybe my first batch is fine being on the weak side
Have you smoked outside of Germany? I only ever smoked in Germany so I don’t know how it is anywhere else in Europe so maybe my experience is the problem, but I have friends who have come to the US and said weed is way stronger here.
No, only ever smoked in Germany. That would explain how it is shown in american media
Thats growing weed.
Any tips for good weed?
If you can grow indoor and force into flower (8 to 12 hours per day light and lower the temp a bit) that will give you the most consistent crops. Bugs are likely the number one problem particularly with normal soil grown plants. I recommend doing smaller shorter grows but more per year. The shorter grows time means less likely you will have an infestation problem. Well mean smaller harvests but you can do more per year. This kind of control requires a location you can entirely remove any light sources but your grow lights.
Overall it is really hard to kill a weed plant. They grow like a weed. Thus the name. In my case, I able leave them in the grow stage for a month then flip the lights to 10 hours days to force flowering. At that point they might be a foot high but even in flower they will grow another 3 feet over the next two months. Clean out any dead or crappy branches. Also at some point about half way thru I start to remove bottom leaves and thin out a bit. 90 percent of your harvest will be from the top. They will get super sticky if you do it right. Leaves on the bottom typically get little light and use up energy. Stressing your plant is part of the cycle. Basically the low light and leaves being cut off tells the plant fall is coming and I am struggling a bit so start to flower heavily to carry on my species.
And for God’s sake, don’t over fertilizer. Most soils are good by themself or only require a small amount of nutrients. I don’t know how many people grew but get these crappy returns as they over fertilizer and as it hurts their growth, they keep think even more will make it better.
Anyhow this is just part of a good crop advice. Lots of videos. Mostly keep a clean room and other than water and a bit of love, you will get good crops.
Forgot one thing. Get feminized seeds. You can’t have males. You don’t even want your neighbors to have males. Burn their house.
“You don’t even want your neighbors to have males. Burn their house.”
This is actually quite reasonable, IMO.
(No. Please don’t actually!)
2000 into my fully automated hydroponic weed factory. Another 500 to make my nutrient solutions from scratch. Mind you that 500 dollars when making from scratch likely last 20 years of crops. It does make a good 1.5 pounds of dry weed every 3 to 4 months with the for legal plants allowed in Canada. I barely smoke so give nearly all away.
Three year prior, harvested a crop down right before going to Mexico for three month trip. Was still some shoots barely growing so for shits and giggles I turn the lights back to 22 hours per day to see if they would go back to the veg state. Have camera so can watch it remotely. Shit starts fully growing like a new plant. Anyhow COVID puts a wrinkle in my return. Ended up in Mexico for 18 months. Over that time, thing kept growing like nuts. Automation on water replacement and nutrient injection along with pH monitoring. Became sort of a how long can this thing go with near zero human intervention. Had only to send my brother in law in three times to cut it down and refill my nutrient injectors from solutions I made before leaving.
Right? When you grow, you really get an appreciation for what an amazing, and resilient plant it is.
I used to grow, but never smoked except to taste my harvest. My spouse smoked daily and heavily. I didn’t, but I LOVED coming home from work to my grow room. It was so therapeutic! Still is, but I miss my old HPS & MH lights.
Well it is called weed for a reason. Is definately therapeutic for me too. I started with MH lights. Without question they resulted in a better crop. I am now all LED but I had to double the specified wattage equivalence. In other words if you’re taking out a 1000 watt MH light, you need to put in 2000 watts of LED equivalence. More or less all the LED manufacturers lie when they state what the equivalence is for growing. Still worth it as you will save on power within two or three years and you are not dealing with excessive heat or burning your tops. I forgot about that full cost now that I think of it. Likely spent more than I said.
This is not the first post where I feel it but I love it so much that we have a lot of people on Lemmy that can talk about things not related to computers!
Except the selfhost crowd here.
Lol that was going to be mine… from using an old laptop as an xbmc->Plex server to running a thread ripper UnRaid server with 48TB and 2TB cache
There is large thread for this somewhere down.
Yes but that’s only good. I’m a computer guy too, but I couldn’t talk much about anything else, and I want to read about other topics too, besides this
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
Dang. Congrats on your sweet tangents! Every race I run, ESPECIALLY that kinda distance, my watch is always going to be a bit over.
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.
This is why shoes these days are super engineered cushions essentially. Don’t skimp on shoes if you’re young and reading this, buy the good shit because it’s good (and usually it’s more expensive). $200 now saves thousands in replacements and tons of pain along the way.
The races are so expensive! I can’t justify signing into one yet, I’m ready to run a half marathon but I’ll wait until I can run a nice full marathon since it’s almost the same price
They can be wildly expensive, and some truly aren’t worth it. I almost always opt to donate the shirt I get because frankly I’m a little picky about my gear and they’re rarely good quality, but even beyond that I’ve run a few where the race coordinators just haven’t got a clue how to host a race and I really start to question why I even paid to register at all.
Fortunately I’ve found an amazing local company that hosts trail runs and is managed by a former ultramarathoner and they’re the best races I’ve been a part of. I also feel good about paying a local small business.
Good luck making it to your first marathon 😀
I fucking love trail running gear and I’m not afraid to admit it
Oh yeah, forgot about that one. You thought you just needed one pair of shoes? Well, no I need a different pair for trail running and road running. And it gets cold here and I like to run in the winter so that’s a whole other set of clothing I gotta have. And let’s don’t even get started talking about how the grocery bill gets hiked up during the training cycle…
Still cheaper than my cycling hobby!
Every so often you read something where someone perfectly summarised your own thoughts and experiences.
For me it is maybe camping.
I just tested my new sleeping bag - under 0.5kg rated to -5°C. And realised that I bought/ replaced lots of gear to higher quality gear over few years.
Camp stoves and fuel! I can buy a lot of bic lighters and cheap metal camping mugs for the cost of a dang Jetboil stove and fuel.
When I can I just make fire. I have some camping stove, really cheap one, but I use it maybe 2 times per year.
The cheap one I have is for ethanol/ urotropin tablets.
trying to get a motocamping setup going. Spent over $200 at REI last weekend just for a tarp shelter and accoutrements and I still have 75% of the list to go which is only NECESSARY items…
Oh my! I spent so much on camping! I get so excited by all the gadgets that people come up with.
Board games. Things get expensive once you start collecting
But you don’t understand, I totally need that 30$ Oceania expansion for my Wingspan that I will play maybe twice a year
Oooh right - I totally forgot about that expansion! I should finally unbox it and prepare it to be played just in case…
My board game group usually buys games more often than we have time to meet and play, so it just comes with this hobby I guess. A friend told me all the time about the stack of three games he had bought and never played and that we still need to play them and then informed me today, that he has just bought Council of Shadows…
The stack of shame of never-played games is real… Everyone ends up defaulting to the same selection of tried and true games of the group because nobody wants to learn a new thing when you can just get to playing immediately, it’s very unfortunate
European expansion is worth it! I like the round end goals!
I swear I’ve tried to enjoy the European expansion but some of the birds require you to pull some Hannibal Barca 4d chess shit to use them properly
For me it was D&D: all those fucking books, dice and lead figurines.
New character means new dice! Even if it’s just the idea for a new character…
Here are some pubs where you can borrow games and play them there.
But it is usually tradeoff - good game selection and bad beer, or bad games and great beer.
I had to create a “if you add one, you sell one” rule after running out of shelf space.
Coffee. I’m in a coffee producing country. It could be as cheap as grabbing a bag from the coffee institute (really good and cheap), a cloth filter and call it a day. Instead, I’m on my second espresso machine, fourth grinder, second portafilter set, and have all the doodads to make it just how I like it.
Don’t listen to the others. What you are doing is good. I, too, am obsessed with a decent cup.
Just yesterday, I was out with my wife and we went to a coffee shop. I got a superlative cappuccino and picked up a pretty expensive bag of beans meant for espresso. So good.
When I was younger, I could never afford this sort of thing, but as I get older I can’t really enjoy a lot of other things and don’t need to spend much to live other than basic expenses. :)
Man, lucky you got coffee shops around that serve food coffee, I got 2 shops in the whole of my city that serve decent, not good, coffee.
It’s a big city so there’s a few. I don’t get out much, though. :)
I needed a new saucepan.
I’ve now replaced half my kitchen.
Photography.
I started to really get into it back in 2015 with a Sony A6000 and a kit lens. Then you buy more, higher quality lenses. Then you buy better camera bodies with full frame sensor, then lenses that are full frame compatible. Then the various odds and end accessories. Then trips around the world to take pictures of things.
I have taken a break from photography recently, on account that having a kid doesn’t allow me a lot of opportunity to edit my photos anymore. They say the best camera you have is the one that is on you. That has proven to be true while I try to be as present as possible around my daughter. I can quickly take out my phone, capture the moment and it will take care of most of the post processing edits that I can share with family later.
Reading. Bear with me…you start by getting a cheap physical or digital copy of the book. Then you fall in love with the book/author. Then you have to buy all the books by that author…but not the cheap editions…the fancy editions! You need to display these babies! And oh! They sell cool collectors items that would be perfect for the book shelf! Rinse and repeat for so…so many books. Sigh.
Sounds like your hobby isn’t actually reading, but collecting books
You leave my Way of Kings leatherbound and Year of Sanderson boxes alone!
You sound like my friend. She owns multiple editions of the same books because there was a fancy cover but then the books had matching covers with related books but oh look they made an illustrated edition!
My wife and I have a room with an entire wall full of books, more in numerous bookcases around the house, and a couple boxes of books that aren’t on shelves. They’re mostly bought second hand on eBay, dirt cheap. Reading is cheap. Collecting pristine/fancy copies is expensive.
You start at the library… then you read a series they only have the first 2 of and fall in love.
So you need to buy the third one somewhere… then you have a choice to make, do you really buy JUST the third of a series? May as well just buy the box set…
Gardening.
Containers are surprisingly expensive. And you need a lot of soil to fill them, which gets expensive too. Then it’s impossible to only buy the seeds you need, when there are so many cool varieties…
It’s all about learning to mcguiver shit. If you have some land/trees keep all the leaves, branches and yard debris, + some cardboard boxes. I fill like a foot or two of every big bed or container that way before I use soil. Cheap material for containers like using big plaster 55g drums cut in half or the top cut off can be found easily. I like to use galvanized roofing sheets with some framing for large beds.
Gardening is a great way to save money from sitting on your bank account.
The raised beds were only $200 for the wood.
I blended compost with my sandy native dirt for only another $200.
The cute fence around it was another $200 plus… Plus $100 for the new tablesaw blade because I needed it to make it.
The additional irrigation setup was only $80.
I get the fertilizer with my employee discount, only around $100 per year.
The front flower bed was only $400 to make it tiered with retaining blocks.
Then there the $300 per year for flowers etc that I just have to have.
Then there is my vegetable seed bill. That’s relatively cheap, only around $200 per year.
Since I start my plants I from seeds i need a starting setup. That’s $200 for the lights plus another $100 for the heater.
Potting soil and trays are another $75 per year.
Then there’s the steady stream of tools etc that I break or wear out and need to be replaced. Another $200-400 per year.
And then there’s the koi pond…
Oh yep, thankfully I am limited by the small size of my garden. But in the past years I’ve spend a lot on it. In the first year I only realised it when I made my budget at the end of the summer. It was so many small purchases but ended up to a big sum !
I started with a couple gifted plants, some hand-me-down pots and a cheap bag of potting soil. Figured I’d “keep it simple” and it wouldn’t be much more than that.
Now it’s different potting mixes, mulch, fertilizers, antifungals, and that’s not even counting the durable stuff I want now like plant stands and even a humidity tray. Oof.
3d printing. I started out with a cheapish Chinese model, got annoyed by the lack of accuracy and bought a Prusa.
Then there’s the filaments, accessories, post processing stuff… I own a Dremel now for some reason!
And I’m constantly eyeing those resin 3d printers, telling myself the higher resolution is totally worth it…
The only thing saving my bank account is my low attention span and dozens of other interests :)I feel you, started with a cheap 200$ ender 3…. I now have two ender 3’s, an ideaformer belt printer, a bambu p1s, and. Tronxy 400 I’m converting into a Frankenstein printer. Oh and an anycubic mono x resin printer and a laser cutter.
Yea, 6 printers and a freaking laser cutter/engraver. All because I thought it would be fun to tinker with 3D printing
Ouch… it’s like looking at my future self :)
Maybe we should start a support group.Well, there’s a 3D printing board at lemmy.world, but it’ll probably just make it worse
It can also save money. I love just printing things I need rather than buying them! Even if I have to do some test fits, I can easily beat off-the-shelf prices with some meters of PLA.
Happy with my Prussia mini, but starting to feel the post-processing itch.
3D printing turned into building printers. Im 2 Vorons deep, and the annex k3 is starting to look interesting. Machine in general. I know I have no Real use for a co2 laser, but damn does it look interesting.
So I gues building machines.
Watercolor.
Children play with $5 palettes. Apparently I pay $20 for a single color tube.
