That's really where I burnt the first 4 weeks of this exercise. I would go on those sites, read blogs/posts/product pages over and over, and get overwhelmed and just shut down based on the number of options.
Probably a personal character fault. You're right that it is overkill. And I'll probably be tossing some more money towards SparkFun soon too - but the just from being a pure-software guy to buying/assembling the raw parts just shut me down :-(
> I would go on those sites, read blogs/posts/product pages over and over, and get overwhelmed and just shut down based on the number of options.
Welcome to engineering. Pick one and finish the project. Then look back.
Yes, running an RPi Zero to watch a button press is overkill. So what? It optimizes delivery time over efficiency. You can optimize for cost or power later if you feel like it.
You know what? That's totally ok. When I first heard of the raspi platform that was what I found most exciting. It was going to take a whole world of people with common web dev skills and kick the door open for them to get into hardware. I'm glad to see that's it's completely living up to that promise.
Probably a personal character fault. You're right that it is overkill. And I'll probably be tossing some more money towards SparkFun soon too - but the just from being a pure-software guy to buying/assembling the raw parts just shut me down :-(