Interesting, I am in the same boat with the author. Recently have started to dabble more in embedded devices. I am building a well water level sensor. First I t

Interesting, I am in the same boat with the author. Recently have started to dabble more in embedded devices. I am building a well water level sensor. First I tried to use an NRF based board, but I got bogged down with the SDK ecosystem, it's really meant for experienced embedded engineers of companies. Then I fell back to much simpler ESP32-C3/S3 boards, which are great, widely supported, easy to set up and pretty reliable. I hook it up to the distance sensor (HC-SR04) and make the distance calculations work. You also have to add a voltage converter if you want to run from batteries, because the sensor requires 5V - easy enough after some reading and failing. Then you have a mess of boards and cables, you need to solder it to a board which requires tools and a bit playing around. Now I was missing an enclosure, tried a few store bought junction boxes, none were perfect, and I decide to buy my own 3D printer (the future is now, print your own things, learn modelling, etc). Those are actually pretty easy compared to everything else, I printed my first models <1h after receiving the printer. Modelling in programmatic OpenSCAD or my currently preferred tool CadQuery - easy to pick up in a few hours of playing around. So yeah, I have had my printer for exactly a week, and I have printed almost a dozen successful prints, and designed a couple of usable and functional parts. Don't be afraid of 3d printers, oh and also you can get good printers for much less than 500 USD, I bought a lightly used second hand Sovol SV06 for 150EUR (220 for new) and it works really well. The idea is I didn't find an existing water-well sensor for my purposes, so I am building my own. Final price of BOM probably 20EUR. Time spent learning and tinkering - hundreds of hours. Cost of stuff I had to buy to support all this, probably somewhere around 500EUR now. (printer, connector crimpers, cables, MCUs, solder boards, sensors, battery holders, electronic components, filament for the printer, soldering iron, etc). It has all been worth it.