The reason many of us build smart homes and tinker with microcontrollers is to make the mundane feel a little more special. Though these projects are far from necessary, they can bring a bit of magic to your everyday routines and teach you a thing or two along the way.

The Raspberry Pi was once an easy recommendation for low-cost tinkering projects, running smart home software, and more. Recently, newer models have gotten so expensive that they're no longer low-cost. Here are some reasons why the older Raspberry Pi 3B+ still beats these newer models.

You can buy a small ESP32 microcontroller for a few dollars—less than a Starbucks coffee. When you combine it with a special LoRa radio, you can create a device that can send encrypted text messages between locations without relying on a cellular service, Wi-Fi, or satellite data.

Stop letting old devices rot in a drawer and bring them back to life with the help of an inexpensive microcontroller and some code. The ESP32 is perfect for this task.

ESP32 boards are incredibly versatile tools. You can use them for a huge range of purposes, and they can also be an extremely cheap way to help you get started in a new creative tech hobby.

Do you have a Raspberry Pi that isn't being used to its fullest? Well, this weekend, I have three projects for you to check out from homelab infrastructure to automatically feeding your pets when you're on vacation.

In my search for a media center front-end, Home Assistant server, media server, and do-everything-else computer, I briefly considered buying a Raspberry Pi. Then I caught wind of the used Mac mini market, and it was clear which direction made more sense.

Raspberry Pis have been popular devices for DIY projects for years. They're ideal for many tech projects, but they're not always the perfect choice. There are many projects where a cheap ESP32 board is a better option, and the benefits go beyond the much lower price.

I use a lot of ESP32 boards around my home, but they don't always have to be stuck indoors. By putting an ESP32 in my car, I'm able to access live engine data from my car that tells me much more than my dashboard does.

I've owned a lot of houseplants in my time and killed many of them. The biggest issue has always been knowing when to water them. Wi-Fi moisture sensors can help, but if you have a lot of plants, the cost can soon add up, and if your Wi-Fi goes down, they become useless. Using an ESP32, you can make a moisture sensor that works offline and is a fraction of the price.

The 1GB Raspberry Pi 5 was introduced in the midst of a RAM crisis that has seen prices of the once-affordable single-board computer hit the roof. You can still get your hands on one for $45 (for now), and your investment can pay for itself in a matter of months if you use it to ditch your subscriptions.

Memory price hikes have pushed new Raspberry Pi prices up across the board and the secondhand market has started looking more appealing than it has in years.

Whether your homelab consists of an ISP-provided router and a mini PC or a whole rack that takes up the corner of your spare room, it could always benefit from a few considered upgrades.

I miss the good old days when you had to queue for a movie, lining up outside the theater and passing the Now Showing posters which would get you excited about what you were about to see. I wanted to build something similar for Jellyfin using a cheap ESP32 display.