this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
705 points (98.9% liked)

Asklemmy

43988 readers
810 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Cloak@lemmy.ml
mekhos@lemmy.ml
tmpod@lemmy.pt
14specks@lemmy.ml
705
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
801 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] choss@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I would love to read about this $20 weather station! Do you maybe have a link?

[–] Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] gregoryw3@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Just an fyi bmp280 is not real temperature but an estimation based on air pressure.