Yeah; honestly if you're going to integrate I2C/UART/SPI, cellular, serial bus stuff, PoE, or anything like that into a project, the Pi (4/5) makes that simple, and almost always painless.
Having well-supported GPIO and documented interfaces is nice, when you want to do anything outside normal 'compute' use cases.
The Pi 4 is still a great option for throwing into random spots for $35 and burning 1-2W of power. The Pi 5 less so, in that common homelab use case.
I wish they made a Pi Zero 2 non-W with an Ethernet port, for $15; that would be the perfect little 'more than microcontroller' endpoint for a lot of things.
> I wish they made a Pi Zero 2 non-W with an Ethernet port, for $15; that would be the perfect little 'more than microcontroller' endpoint for a lot of things.
It's not a Raspberry Pi, but this Radxa board is more powerful than a Pi Zero 2 and has the form factor you're looking for. Price isn't that bad either (around $25 for the cheapest model).
There’s Orange Pi Zero, they are pretty good. I have the very first version from circa 2016, and I like it. The only thing I’d change is to move from 32 bit to 64. But IIRC their very next version is 64 bit. And as of today there are three or four versions. All of which are pretty cheap.
Having well-supported GPIO and documented interfaces is nice, when you want to do anything outside normal 'compute' use cases.
The Pi 4 is still a great option for throwing into random spots for $35 and burning 1-2W of power. The Pi 5 less so, in that common homelab use case.
I wish they made a Pi Zero 2 non-W with an Ethernet port, for $15; that would be the perfect little 'more than microcontroller' endpoint for a lot of things.