One of projects of interest is tracking temperature/humidity inside and outside of our home. My requirements were to monitor at least 6 different areas and feed the data into my home computing center to apply my desired analytics. I debated the "build your own" option using raspberry pis, sensors, and connecting components, or a more "out of the box" solution. But in true "Blow That Dough" mindset, I realized, "why not both?"
So, for my "out of the box" solution I purchased the Ambient Weather WS-3000 monitor with 8 sensors (description at
https://ambientweather.com/amws3000x8.html). The 5 sensor model was about $30 cheaper, but adding one sensor that brought the price to around $10 less than getting it with 8 sensors. The sensors run on batteries, which gives more flexibility for where to place them. The WS-3000 can record the collected data on a SD card. But, folks have figured out how, via its USB interface, to directly collect the data, and code is available for Linux (node.js Javascript or python) to do this. Both the hardware and programming setup was simple, and all is working so far.
This gives me time to play with the "build your own" option as a self-education project, and not feeling "rushed" to get something working. It will be interesting to see how the costs compare..., but no worries, Blow that Dough!