[Havoc]

The entire ESP ecosystem is quite accessible for people of modest technical ability.

HomeAssistant+ ESPHome + ESP32 in particular is a good stack because it takes away most of the complexity. Common sensors have ESPHome code available with a quick google so just need to connect the wires right basically

[mlhpdx]

Indeed about ESP32 being approachable. I particularly enjoyed finding and messing about with the Cheap Yellow Display. It’s a fun little platform and with LVGL making it pretty is a joy.

Would have been a nicer fit (smaller bevel) than the LCD in this project at about the same cost.

[NoiseBert69]

Problem is that ESP32s are super power hungry once you start using BLE or Wifi.

For BLE you can use STM32s and Nordics. But Wifi-on-Chip is ESP32-only.

[aksss]

BLE and WiFi are power hungry on any platform. LoRaWAN or zigbee are better for low power, low bw comms. Kinda sacrifice simplicity & ubiquity of support in that you need a gateway/router of some sort, but they are solid solutions with long range and high penetration.