Not a shopping list. Every item here is on the record because it does a specific job, and I can point at the note where it earned its place — or failed and taught me something.
What a thing cost is the least interesting fact about it, so it stays out of the way. Hover or focus a card if you want the number.
01 daily cost Everything gets written, built and shipped on this. Four years in and it has never once been the bottleneck.
02 backup cost The Windows machine for the things macOS refuses to do. Mostly firmware flashing and vendor tools.
03 in service cost Bought as a console, kept as a Linux box that happens to have a screen and a battery.
04 daily cost One charger for the laptop, the phone, the watch and the powerbank that once got me back into my own house.
05 in service cost The compute half of the desk. Overkill for what it does most days, which is the point.
06 in service cost Chosen for the port layout, not the marketing. Every header on it is doing something.
07 in service cost Founders Edition because it fits the case and stays quiet. Both mattered more than the frame rate.
08 in service cost Low profile so the cooler clears it. The least interesting decision in the build, made carefully anyway.
09 in service cost A ten year warranty on the one component whose failure takes everything else with it.
10 in service cost Fast scratch disk. Nothing lives here that isn't also somewhere else.
11 daily cost One panel instead of three. No bezels down the middle of what I'm reading.
12 daily cost The macro keys drive Home Assistant scenes. It is, functionally, a very large light switch.
13 daily cost Eleven buttons, six of which I actually use. That ratio is better than most peripherals manage.
14 in service cost Mecha-membrane, so it types like a laptop and clacks like a mechanical when it wants to. The BlackWidow runs the automations; this is the one my hands are actually on.
15 in service cost A weighted hook so the cable stops dragging across the desk mid-swipe. Sounds unnecessary until the drag is gone.
16 in service cost 64×64 pixels of whatever I feel like putting on the desk that week — clock, art, or a counter for something I am tracking.
17 in service cost The one machine here I have never had to configure. It turns on, it plays the thing, and nothing about it has ever asked me for a firmware file.
18 in service cost The adaptive triggers are the one haptics gimmick I stopped noticing, which is exactly what good haptics are supposed to do.
19 backup cost Two trackpads and a gyro, discontinued for being too strange. A decade on it still handles the games a thumbstick was never going to.
20 daily cost The reason every automation in the house still fires when the internet is down. Border router, not a cloud relay.
21 daily cost mmWave presence, so a room knows someone is in it even when nobody moves. PIR never managed that.
22 daily cost 129 days on the first set of batteries, then it locked me out. The USB-C failsafe on the outside is the only spec that mattered.
23 in service cost Face recognition runs on the device. Nothing about who comes to my door leaves the house.
24 in service cost Wi-Fi 6, which is how it ended up on the wrong side of the concrete wall and started the whole network survey.
25 in service cost A screen on the wall for guests who don't have the app and shouldn't need it.
26 in service cost Water heaters and ACs, with power monitoring. The only devices in the house whose consumption I can actually prove.
27 in service cost Hidden behind the existing switches, so the house got smarter without looking any different.
28 in service cost The Google-shaped exception in an otherwise HomeKit house. It runs kitchen timers and answers questions, and it is not trusted with anything that locks.
29 in service cost A wall panel that shows what the house is doing without a backlight burning all day. Refreshes when something changes, not on a loop.
30 daily cost Runs Proxmox, the NAS and the ad blocker, always on, drawing less than a light bulb. The quietest important machine here.
31 in service cost The official box, for the parts of the setup where DIY stopped being the point. Plug it in and Home Assistant is already running — no image to flash, no card to burn.
32 in service cost Two drives so one can fail. That is the entire strategy and it has been enough so far.
33 in service cost 61 megapixels is absurd for what I shoot. It means I can crop a product shot to death and it still holds.
34 in service cost The lens that stays on the body. Every other one is a decision I have to make first.
35 backup cost Flies four times a year and justifies itself every time. The rest of the year it's a box on a shelf.
36 in service cost Light enough that I actually bring it. A heavier tripod is a better tripod that stays at home.
37 in service cost Thin enough that carrying the body stops being a decision. The 24-70 is the lens that stays on; this is the one that gets the camera out of the house.
38 in service cost A one-inch sensor on a gimbal, in something the size of a marker pen. It exists so that not having a camera on me stops being the reason a thing went unfilmed.
39 in service cost The camera I learned on. Everything I know about exposure I got wrong on this body first, and it still fires.
40 in service cost The lens that came in the box, and the reason I understood why people replace the lens that came in the box.
41 in service cost The long end, for the few times a year the subject won't let me walk closer. It has never once been the lens I regretted packing.
42 in service cost The cheapest thing on this page and the one that changed how my photographs looked. Nothing else here has that ratio.
43 in service cost A sling bag when it is one lens for the afternoon, a backpack when it is the whole kit. Converts instead of forcing the choice upfront.
44 daily cost The NFC shortcuts hub. Half the automations in this house start with a tap against a sticker.
45 daily cost The fastest way into my own house. Wrist near the door, door opens, nothing comes out of a pocket.
46 in service cost Heavy, expensive, and the only headphones I can wear for a nine hour flight without noticing.
47 daily cost In a pocket at all times. The most-used object on this entire page by a wide margin.
48 in service cost Twice the ANC of the Pro 2 and ear tips down to an XXS, which is the size that actually stays in. The heart rate sensor is the feature I didn't ask for and now use anyway.
49 retired cost Four years of daily use, now the pair that lives in the camera bag as insurance.
50 in service cost The whole point of running Home Assistant locally is that it keeps working when the grid does not. This is the half of that promise the software cannot keep on its own.
51 daily cost The laser reads as a gimmick right up until the first time you use it, and then you cannot go back to not knowing what was on the floor.
52 in service cost Vacuums and mops on its own schedule, then empties and washes itself. The floors stay done without being on my list.
Nothing in this category yet.