the prices for that aren’t even especially low, though.

remember, it’s also massively inflated because all the cutting edge fab capacity is being used to build entropy-and-scam machines, and before that, scamming machines. I remember when you could build a damn solid gaming computer with current gen hardware for 500$ without much sacrifice.

if you want to know what most of this actually costs, look at something like the MSRP on the raspberry pi. a general purpose chip that can do 99% overpowered for what 99% of these devices do.

look at how much you’ll pay for an esp32 or, if that’s too beefy for your application, an esp8266. arduino if you want prehistoric oldschool italian luxury. it’s like 5$ plus 0.10-15 dollars per sensor, and the fifteen dollar sensors are for exotic stuff like air quality.