3D printing. Purchased a cheap 3D printer to save money printing things instead of buying things. 5 printer print farm later, no idea why I'm doing this to myself.
this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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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.
Sex toys. My collection is worth more than my car.
That's one hell of a depreciating asset ya got there.
Most of them are high end silicone toys from Bad Dragon and Mr Hankey's toys and hold their value quite well. I purchased around 80% of them on the used market and can turn around and sell them for about the same amount so the depreciation hit is minimal.
TIL, there's a market for used sex toys!
My grandma got me 3 ducklings in 2019 for no reason. 3 ducks don't cost very much. The issue is, that she unlocked a passion. I now have 12 ducks. I want more, but I don't have the money or space.
We need to talk about the ducks.
We just got few hens in spring. Week ago I found 2 chickens wondering on street.
Took them home and my parents said that every normal child brings home some kitten or dog not 2 chick's.
Surprised there’s no reef tank people here. Imagine spending $5000 on a 20 gallon fish tank - BEFORE spending any money on corals.
Ya it CAN be done for $50, but nobody does that.
I needed a new saucepan.
I've now replaced half my kitchen.
I am probably too late to this... But here goes.
Every damn time I get into something, I over do it.
I spent $13k on my kitchen stove, this one keeps giving, but that is $13,000.00 USD! Just for my kitchen stove. My range hood because it is required with my high output stove was $3k, and then let's talk makeup air to replace what is taken out by it.
Or what about woodworking? Yep, I wanted to do it, and still do. I have a half completed work bench, and some basic tools... That will be about $2k...
Let's buy a boat! Yep 29 years old, runs great... Break out another thousand...
But most recently, Plex... You know, let's get rid of subscriptions... Yeah, this year alone I have put $900 or so into that. Yep I sure saved money on canceling Netflix!
To be fair, Plex/home theater stuff is so stinking fun tho.
That it is. What I really like is seeing 5 users or so all active at the same time... That makes it worth my $.
If it weren't for me being able to have friends use it, I am 99% certain my wife would kill me for spending so much on it.
I have autism and ADHD, so all of them:
- Cycling
- Bicycle touring
- Skateboarding
- Vert Skateboarding
- Freestyle Skateboarding
- Retro Video Gaming
- Drawing
- Reading
- Programming and Raspberry Pi's
That's only my 30's which is the last 4 years. Hobbies for me are normally short and fierce obsessions when I start, they eventually slow down into a more 'normal' pasttime that I do sometimes to past the time.
Mechanical pencils. You can go from $6 Kuru Toga Advances to $60 rOtring 800s to $100+ imported Japan region exclusive Kuru Toga Dives
Clicked that link as fast as I could. I thought it would be cool, but didn't realise it would be that cool. Thank you
What is that sorcery?!
Farming - family has been doing it for ~5 generations. I'd say we have put in about $10 M dollars over time (adjusted for inflation).
What's that dear? It's a way of life/occupation . . . are you sure? Seems like it must be a hobby given the return we've made on it over the years. Well, if you're sure.
My wife said that farming is technically an occupation and not a hobby. I still have my doubts given how much we have thrown away on it over the years, but I don't like to disagree with her (she's usually right).
This is something that's really hard for me. I'm against corn subsidies because I'm tired of everything having corn/corn syrup because it's so cheap. I think the subsidies should be based on something else that promotes variety, and also favors sustainable farming instead of monocropping with petroleum based fertilizer. I know it needs subsidized, because people are price sensitive, but it needs to be done differently.
In Clarksons Farm Jeremy made about 200£ before subsidies. So I can imagine how slim are these margins and how much you depend on subsidies.
I bought myself a raspberry pi for my birthday a few years ago.
I now have thousands of dollars in hardware sitting in a server rack in my office. Whoops.
A single 1TB drive should be enough for my Plex server, I said.
123TB isn't enough, I need more 18TB hard drives, I said.
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
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.
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
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!
Motorcycle riding, done the right way.
Bought a decent street bike to start on, learn the ropes for several years, had the occasional mishhap or two which I fixed by myself. Still, cost money to fix things right?
Upgraded to a proper sport bike and realized how much fun it is, also with a new level of danger involved. Still, I wasn't an idiot into things right. Bought 100% proper gear, including a track suit, good helmet, gloves, etc. as any motorcyclist knows, you'll eventually drop your bike, which I did. Again, fixing it yourself is certainly an option, but also again, it cost money.
Then, I made the mistake of going to my first track day. They will allow you to use your own motorcycle as long as you prep it correctly and have decent tires and safety gear. This was an absolute game changer, and I was hooked harder than a heroin addict with an unlimited bank account. Unfortunately, I am neither of those two categories, and track days only get more expensive the deeper you get into them. First of all, they are not cheap to begin with. A decent track day will set you back 300 to $500 just to get on the track. Then, to really get the most out of it, you should have true racing tires with tire warmers. Then there's the matter of getting your bike to the track, race fuel, a place to hang out, etc etc etc. The list goes on and on.
Board games. Things get expensive once you start collecting
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.
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...
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
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!
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.
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 :)
Watercolor.
Children play with $5 palettes. Apparently I pay $20 for a single color tube.
Mechanical keyboards. The next one is my endgame, I swear. Just one more groupbuy for those keycaps. It never truly ends.
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?"
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 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.
Just an fyi bmp280 is not real temperature but an estimation based on air pressure.
Has there already grown a noteworthy Arduino/ESP Community on Lemmy?
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