[palmotea]

> I may not need automatic accounting and inventory via spreadsheets at a small scale, but being able to model the next 3 days of weather based on local conditions without any expectation of online communications could come in pretty handy

Alright. You have a computer in your possession that is vastly more powerful than an 8-bit machine built from scavenged parts.

1. Do you actually "model the next 3 days of weather based on local conditions without any expectation of online communications" with it?

2. If not, do you know how to built the required sensor suite and write the software to do that?

I feel like you're misunderstanding computers as magic boxes that can do some useful thing with little effort. But this is supposed to be a form of software engineers, building a weather forecasting system would be hard to do even with full access to a university library, Digikey, and the money to work on it full time. But we're talking about doing it with scavenged components while you're hungry looking for food.