If you’re a middle-aged geek like me, you’ll love a good hobby. Whether you’re obsessed with pulling the perfect god shot of espresso or building the perfect audiophile setup, a lot of hobbies can get very expensive. They don’t have to start that way; plenty of great tech hobbies let you start with gadgets you may already have lying around.
Retro gaming
An old phone or Raspberry Pi can bring back the good old days
Gaming today is almost unrecognizable from the games many of us played growing up. Old 8-bit gaming systems had a tiny fraction of the performance of modern consoles, but many of the games were still awesome to play.
If you long for the simpler days of 8-bit gaming, you can relive your youth by setting up your own retro gaming station. You need very little to do so; modern phones can run emulation software. I set up a retro gaming station using an old Samsung Galaxy S8 and a USB-C-to-HDMI adapter.
You don’t need to use a phone; a Raspberry Pi is a popular choice for retro gaming, and even a Raspberry Pi Zero is powerful enough for most 8-bit emulation. Hook up a controller, and you’re ready to go.
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Homelabbing
You need surprisingly little to get started
Setting up a homelab is one of those hobbies that can start incredibly small but can grow incredibly large (and expensive). The good news is that you don’t need a dedicated NAS and 80TB of storage to get started.
Pi-hole is a popular first step into self-hosting, and as the name suggests, you can run it on a Raspberry Pi. A Pi Zero is more than enough for a typical home, and even an old, first-generation Raspberry Pi has enough processing power to do the job.
You don’t have to start your homelab journey with a Raspberry Pi, either. An old laptop or desktop can be enough to run services such as Home Assistant, Plex, and Immich. Just be careful, because the urge to add more and more services and endlessly upgrade your equipment is very real.
Astronomy and astrophotography
You don’t need an expensive telescope (to start with)
Credit: Amazon
If I ever reach the point where I actually have some free time (in other words, when my kids have moved out), my plan is to get into astrophotography. I’ve always wanted to try it, but it takes a reasonable amount of time that I just don’t have right now.
While astrophotography can quickly turn into a very expensive hobby, it doesn’t have to start out that way. You don’t need to buy an enormous telescope or an expensive camera. You can get started with an old smartphone or digital camera.
Your current phone may have a better camera, but the advantage of using an old phone is that you can leave it to do its thing, taking multiple exposures or long time-lapse sequences without missing your messages. If you have an old DSLR, you’re no longer using, you can modify it by replacing the filter with one better suited to astrophotography, letting you capture even more dramatic images of objects such as nebulae.
Stop-motion animation
An old phone and some LEGO can get you started
If you’re looking for a geeky creative outlet, consider stop-motion animation. It’s fairly simple to get started; all you need is an old phone, a mount or tripod, and some LEGO or modeling clay to create your animation.
You can use your current phone, but the benefit of using an old phone is that you can leave it in place, which is essential for stop-motion animation. If you need to move your phone to answer a call, getting it back to the exact same position can be a real challenge.
Once you’ve captured your images, plenty of software can stitch them into an animation and let you add sounds and other effects. It’s also a great hobby to take up if you have kids, as it’s something they may really love doing with you.
Electronics
Tinkering has never been easier
Have you ever wanted to start building your own electronics but didn’t want to humiliate yourself by discovering you’re really, really bad at soldering? The good news is that you can do a lot these days without ever touching a soldering iron.
You can use single-board computers such as Raspberry Pisor microcontrollers such as Arduinos or ESP32 development boards to build working devices without any soldering at all. Many of these boards come with pre-soldered pins, so building your devices can be as simple as connecting a sensor or two.
You don’t need to worry about writing complex code, either. Platforms such as ESPHome let you write configuration files that build the firmware that runs your devices. You can start small, and once you’ve got the bug, you might decide to try your hand at soldering after all.
Your junk drawer might contain your next hobby
It’s easy to be discouraged from taking up a new hobby by the thought of investing in a lot of specialist equipment before you’re even sure you’ll like it. Thankfully, plenty of ways let you dip your toe in the water using tech you may already own. Just be careful, as even the simplest hobbies can quickly become obsessions.