Tell us why we should unexpectedly come to love your hobby.
Ham radio.
On the surface, it just sounds like listening to a bunch of old farts babbling on about their enlarged prostates, and tbf, there is a bit of that if you never go any deeper than 2M/70cm voice modes.
But there’s just SOOOO much you can do.
Want to see how far you can bounce a signal off a mirror laying on the surface of the moon? Yup. You can do that.
Want to launch and communicate with your own satellite? Yup. It’s a thing.
Want to remotely control devices from hundreds of miles away without using the internet? Yup.
Want to gps track your car at all times, even when there’s no cell phone service? That’s called APRS.
Want to have a conversation with astronauts on the ISS as it flies overhead? They’ve got ham equipment on board.
You can even play with broadcasting and/or receiving “secret” tv and radio stations - that is, they’re on alternate frequencies that regular TVs and radios don’t pick up.
It just goes so deep.
I just can’t afford the equipment. I thought about it back in the analog days, but back then you had to learn Morse code and I just didn’t think I was up for it.
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You can even play with broadcasting and/or receiving “secret” tv and radio stations - that is, they’re on alternate frequencies that regular TVs and radios don’t pick up.
Go on…
Wow, that’s what cooler than I ever would have thought. Thanks for sharing!
I recently started studying for the Technician exam – excited to see I made a good choice!
Literally ANY hobby can seem boring to most people, but it wouldn’t be a hobby if people that got into it didn’t find it interesting as all hell.
Birding, you’ll be truly surprised by the variety of just birds around you. Perks: it gets you out on trails, low cost of entry (binoculars), the data you produce of birds is used for research, and you’re just observing so you don’t need to worry about harming animals.
I remember when everyone was excited about playing Pokemon Go and wishing that there was a way to do something similar but in the wilderness rather than cities. I wanted to be able to wander around the wilds trying to encounter strange and rare creatures. Then I realised I had just invented birdwatching.
You’re John Birdman??
Just don’t try to take pictures. That’s a money pit.
Birding is pretty cool. I enjoy it.
This was a relatively short-term thing, but I think it counts loosely as hobbyish… in my 20s, I was determined to find the best bloody mary in town. I went to every single bar, restaurant, etc. and tried each one in turn.
Which sounds boring, I know, but I had so many great conversations and met so many interesting people.
And to answer your likely question: Surprisingly, Red Lobster, which made its own mix from real tomato juice and didn’t use some crappy bloody mary mix. This was in the 90s, so I can’t endorse their current bloody mary.
Home Automation. It can be as simple as buying a hub and some devices. But, I went the self-hosted route using Home Assistant to give me more control of what it can do.
I have some automations that turn on a certain set of lights on when the sun sets and off when it rises. It’s pretty simple, but saves electricity because I used to leave my front porch light on 24/7.
I just set up an automation last night that sends me a discord notification when the laundry machine finishes and the same for the dryer. I can’t hear the beeping because I am always too far from the laundry room. This one has me so excited!
I’ve seen people automate gardens which seems really neat. Really, your only limit is your imagination. I also just really like having an app on my phone to toggle power to random lights and fans around my house. It helps me get out of bed because I can turn the fan off when I’m cold in bed.
My favourite one I’ve done so far: I put a motion sensor near where my cat goes every morning when she wants to look outside. This then opens the blinds enough for her to see.
This works better than a simple timer because the blinds are loud enough to wake us up sometimes and she doesn’t want to necessarily look outside every day.
That’s honestly adorable. I love it!
I’m messing with domoticz, but looking to home automation as well. I got an RF link from a colleague and I’m now managing light via the socket units of 3 mutual incompatible systems and it works great. I’m thinking of combining it with zigbee and see if I can do more nice things, as range is my biggest issue now.
t an RF link from a colleague and I’m now managing light via the socket units of
I have been waiting on Thread/Matter to be bigger and more adopted before I buy most devices. Everything I use right now is on Wi-Fi (using ESPHome). But, I am in no rush. Just having fun slowly building it out. :)
I just had the Dutch system Klik aan klik uit (kaku), both the old and the new units. Those 2 versions are incompatible and this way I can use both. I used just the new system, but with adding the old units as well I can now make nicer scenes. (turn lights on in a natural ‘entering the room’ order and turn them off the other way around, mimicking leaving the same room.
I’m just messing about as well and I don’t want to use wifi, that’s why I’m half looking at zugbee. (And Ikea uses that system, so I guess it’ll be available for a while)
I was worried about drowning out my network with Wi-Fi devices but I don’t want to invest in Z-Wave or Zigbee unless Thread falls through. Here’s to hoping 🤞
Here it’s just rf433 for now. No need for more (apart from messing around with new stuff). As far as I understand Zigbee doesn’t use wifi, but it can be in the 2.4 GHz band.
sweet! what are you using to detect the laundry cycle?
I am using a Shelly EM to monitor the power usage of two circuits, One phase of the Dryer and the whole circuit for the Washing Machine. Monitoring only one phase of a two-phase circuit makes it inaccurate. But, I just did one phase because I only care to know if it’s off or on.
I used ESPHome to add it to HomeAssistant and this guide to setup the automation.
I would love to get into HA more, and I have it installed and working on my RPi, but the technical aspects are overwhelming. I’m very techy but I wish HA had a “simple” mode the same way my 3D printing software does. That allowed me to become actually decent at printing at a reasonable pace.
I feel like I usually am just pressing buttons on a website. But, I admit it can be a bit confusing…
The Discord notification thing actually is actually a really cool idea. That’s where it feels like it moves from hobby into daily practical use kind of stuff.
One question I have, if you don’t mind - did the washer/dryer come with some smart functionality, or did you have to do somethin like opening them up and wiring into the electrical line for the beep speaker to sense voltage?
My washer/dryer has no smart functionality. I explained it here but I put a device in my breaker box with a clamp on the two lines and that just sends the current to Home Assistant. I read a bunch before I ever tried it and many people have put vibration sensors in/in their dryers. But, this way seems more reliable.
I did my laundry 3 hours faster than usual today because I actually knew when it was done. Worth it to me.
My people! I knew I was starting to get into it when I built some multisensors and a garage door switch controlled by esp32s. Still haven’t done too many very complex things with automations, basically situational lighting and so on.
Did you use OpenGarage?
Nah, I just put a relay and esp32 together and connected it alongside the garage door switch (super old school). It sits on top of the opener in a little enclosure. I originally controlled it with mqtt, but later reflashed the esp with esphome.
Nothing wrong with that! Cool beans! I haven’t tried either. My garage has too much stuff to hold a car so the door is rarely opened.
Hypermiling. The act of getting the most gas mileage out of your car. When you get into it, there are an insane amount of factors that play into it all, from driving habits, aerodynamic car mods, engine mods, power usage, tires, wheels, suspension, etc. the rabbit hole is deep, my friend
Every time I think about how I’d have to drive to do this, the nicest reaction I come up with is “nah, not worth it”. Also the people that draft semis are stupid mofos.
Definitely stupid, that is the worst way to save fuel.
Personally, I’m not usually up for getting the best mileage out, but knowing the tips is definitely nice if I know I need to save. Not to mention, the aero mods are beneficial for performance driving too, and it’s a passive thing, which is nice.
You gotta leave enough room to react and stick out the side just a bit so you can see in front of it just a bit but also you can stop a lot quicker than them.
I generally don’t do it with Semis though, and I probably don’t get as close as the people you’re thinking of. If I’m on a long trip I’ll ushally try to find a fifth wheel camper going roughly the speed I want and I’ll set my adaptive cruise to the minimum distance. The campers throw fewer rocks.
Also if you’re ever drafting make sure to keep an eye on your temperature. Most of the time it should be fine but a hot day and going uphill it could very easily overheat, especially if you’ve done some of the other hypermilling mods like partial grille block.
Musical synthesizers.
Historically it is a hobby that’s had a high financial barrier to entry.
But the past decade has had a huge flourish of affordable and unique synthesizers and related musical equipment show up on the market. A lot of this stuff can be a TON of fun regardless of your musical knowledge/skill level. A few days on YouTube and a hundred bucks and beginners can be making their own music, with or without a computer with audio software.
It starts simple, and can go to endless depths of creativity.
I super agree! I helped my daughter attend a zoom class on software based synths during covid, and had so much fun fiddling with making weird sounds and loops within loops. I forget the name, algorithm or something? Pd?. And you can get kits to solder up little real life circuits to string together, each one adds a whole dimension to what you can make the sounds do. Easy to get into and incrementally build on.
To anyone that might be interested in this you should check out VCV rack. It’s a free software emulation of modular euroracks. They even have software recreations of classic modules that would be considered standard for most racks.
Obviously this route lacks the major aspect of physical interaction and feedback which many say is a large component in there enjoyment of the hobby but you can still learn all the basic and experiment to find out if it’s something that grabs your interests.
Fair warning: If you do catch the bug there will be a point in time where you start trying to justify spending $400 on a single LFO module. This is normal. Don’t be afraid.
Knitting
My wife is textile-obsessed. She started with crocheting and knitting, but this is basically her minus the ending:
I think every enthusiastic knitter has experienced this too, lol
She’s definitely enthusiastic. She spins when we watch movies, she knits when we go out to see friends or wait at the doctor, she weaves on her schacht inkle loom sometimes, she dyes fiber, the whole gamut. The only reason we don’t have a sheep is because the dog would endlessly harass it.
Dogs can be trained and sheep are great animals, haha!
Mine can’t be trained. We’ve tried. She’s the most stubborn dog ever. And she likes to murder. If she wasn’t so sweet, we wouldn’t keep her around.
This is me with embroidery. I started out making a couple of friendship bracelets in June. And then I thought, “Hey, now I have a bunch of extra floss, why don’t I try to embroider something?” So I bought a couple of kits to practice, and now like 2 months later, I have a full box of floss including some fancy shit from Japan, a boatload of hoops, and piles of colored cotton. I moved from printing other people’s patterns to customizing them in like, a week. I created my own monster. And now my favorite supply store has patterns for tiny embroidered felt animals so I’m starting a set of dinosaurs.
The real issue is what the fuck do I do with all this stuff I’m making. I don’t want to monetize it and I’m not really good enough for that anyway, but it’s gonna be a problem soon.
My wife is there with you too. She has a huge toolbox full of embroidery floss. And you should see her “craft room,” which is pretty much our house’s dining room.
I like her, she seems cool. I purposely built a crafting area with a huge closet when I finished the basement. At a certain point, you just have to accept that the crafts have taken over your life and home.
There was one thing I had to put my foot down on finally. She had a loom that was the size of a washer and dryer and she used it maybe a couple of weeks a year. Eventually I had to insist she get rid of it and she agreed. Now she has a couple of small looms, which is fine.
I taught myself using videos and became - over years - an advanced knitter. My goal was; i want to be able to design and knit anything i want to, and i achieved that goal (not always flawlessly, but still). It’s fun, colorful, the knitting communities are great, and you will boost your self esteem, because even though you will make tons of mistakes (even at an advanced level), you will also learn how to fix them, or hide them. Edit to change teached into taught…
3D printing. You just spend hours looking at a printer printing things by itself.
Coin collecting/numismatics.
I can’t speak for other collectors but my focus is on ancient coins, mostly Roman imperials.
The amount of history and artistry in those coins is off the charts amazing, and every single one is like a tiny window into the past. To many outsiders it seems like one of the stuffiest things to do. It does require a good bit of research which can get a bit dry at times, but nothing beats that feeling of holding literal treasure of 2000+ years old.
Gardening. There are a million things to learn, and every year is an adventure.
Also making things from yarn. So many different techniques, yarns, styles, and colors. And if you have a project that is easy, you can binge watch at the same time.
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