• Smart Lighting - My mum replaced most the lightblub in our house with Philips Hue. Nearly decade on and still using them which as an Autistic, I love that I can tweak the lighting to however I want from an app and compare to regular lightbulbs, it doesn’t give me as much sensory nightmare as I find some of the lighting to be really harsh and distracting.
• Noise-cancelling Headphones - Often use it if I’m in sensory overload, walking as I tend to listen to music as well as being on the bus to distract myself which otherwise, I start panicking how full the bus is.
• Desktop DAC & Bookshelf Speakers - Always find changing volume on OS itself to not be perfect as it too low or high for my liking. I can simply tweak the volume knob of my Desktop DAC to get the volume just right. Also great way to listen to music

I guess my bike? Have saved loads of money on bus tickets and it’s much more reliable too.

Sewing machine pays for itself quite quickly as paying a tailor to repair your clothes is like 1/3 the cost of a brand new sewing machine, so just repair like 3 items of clothing to get your money back.

I got a hot air rework station with a soldering iron many years ago.

The things I’ve repaired with it are so numerous, I cannot even recount them all, but here are a few:

• an assortment of gaming controllers
• a ghetto blaster from the 1970’s
• a few gaming consoles (Xbox 360, PS3 “Fat Lady”)
• retro technology (at least two 3Dfx Voodoo’s and a rare Abit motherboard)
• a full-metal eBook Reader (Sony PRS-505) that will probably survive an atomic fallout
• a Panasonic broadcasting camera from the 1990’s (because it looked cool and I wanted it to work)
• a few LCD monitors

Even though some of that work was just replacing old capacitors, I have saved so much money by buying “broken” stuff and fixing it up. No regrets. Over the years, I paired the station with a hotplate and a solder sucker and now I could probably open up an electronics repair shop. But I mostly do these repairs for fun. Fixing things calms my mind and soothes my soul.

a pair of PSB 50 mkII loudspeakers. I paid ~$650 Cdn for them back in 1992, and still have them cranking from my office/gaming PC.

A lot of my work gear is sort of pricey but it keeps me safe and working. Usually pays itself off within a month or two and will last at least a few years.

Bought a sunrise alarn clock then felt some benefits of waking up easier

Then used it with combination of opening curtains and that energized me a lot

Now thinking the final evolution will be to have a curtain setup that auto-opens at the set time, and changeable when needed. Not sure yet if anything already exists product-wise for that but that’s something that will very likely help you a lot too (Hopefully you have a window next to your bed)

It is super underrated waking up millions times easier via the sun (Pair with consistent sleep schedule of when you sleep and wake)

Minecraft

The amount of modded minecraft I’ve played…

Yugioh DS 2011

So much yugioh

The 2DS

Hack this for the ultimate DS. No folding = no weak spot.

Extra RAM

Allows me to run Qwen Image Edit. It’s like a glimpse into the future.

Wacom tablet thing

Drawing on the computer. Also good for DS emulation.

My motorcycle has paid for itself many times over in terms of the enjoyment I get out of riding it. It’s something I can recommend to anyone, and lets you see the world in a way most people never will.

A local NAS for storing all my files, especially if you consider all the value I deprived from Google and Microsoft by not engaging with their cloud bullshit. Even if you don’t, I paid like $500 CAD one single time for a 16 TB server hard drive and $300 for a consumer hard drive I’m using as an offline emergency backup. Meanwhile just 2 TB of Google Drive costs $139.99 CAD per year. I wasn’t able to find pricing for 16 TB but assuming it scales linearly (like if I had 8 2TB accounts since Google seemingly doesn’t offer any higher capacity for individuals), that would be $1,119.92 per year. Even factoring in the hard drive enclosure and the server itself, they’ve paid for themselves in literally half a year. That’s saying nothing of the kind of internet connection I would need to match the read speed of a mechanical hard drive on the local network. I could literally upgrade my entire house to 10 gigabit with the money I saved.

My solar panels have. Literally.

Setting up a fully automated system to download, track and organise … eh … Linux distributions …onto a NAS under the stairs. I used to subscribe to a bunch of services that would … eh … provide access to all sorts of … eh … Linux distributions … for a flat monthly fee, but I realised that I often was only really interested in one or two specific Linux distribution so I really didn’t need to pay for these services.

Now I just download the … eh … Linux distributions that I actually want to install. It also prevents my kids from … eh … endlessly installing different Linux distributions. Not really a productive use of time.

A couple years ago I bought a lifetime license for Plex and it has been so wonderful. I can truly own my media that I’ve purchased, watch it from any device, and share it with Family and close friends.

My tractor has more than paid for itself.

Any gadget/tool/product with standard AA/AAA C/D sized batteries and a bunch of rechargeable batteries. Mostly, if I leave a gadget is because it doesn’t work, or because the included rechargeable battery is depleted and hard to replace.

My Nancy pelosi stock bot has done really well