And cars, and smart thermostats and smart cameras and smart fridges and routers and literally every fucking thing in your house that is connected to the fucking internet. Every single thing in our homes is a data miner.
How do you learn? I have some ESP32s that I’ve messed around a little bit with, and done some neat stuff…But I don’t have an electronics background at all and I often have trouble even figuring out how to power the damn things safely.
Using homeassistant and esphome is a good starting place unless you want to learn python or C
Dozens!
(They also last longer than the premade stuff, including the fairly dumb zigbee devices. Though just grabbing some ZigBee sensors is soooo much easier than cleaning up and painting small 3d printed housings…)