It’s unclear whether the usages are with Pi or Pi Zero, although advice applies to both. I have found more use with the Pi Zero W versus the full Pi. Some stuff certainly could be done using ESP, but faster to get done on Pi for me.

> Why would you buy an expensive raspi for these scenarios?

I know, right? I had to mortgage my family's ancestral home for the $35 to buy a raspberry pi 4 at microcenter. Luckily they had SD cards on sale, so I was able to buy the power supply and storage for the cost of a kidney. And now I can manage my home automation devices!

Pis are expensive? A Pi 4 and all accessories is about $100. Where am I going to do better? Every time someone says this I go look at NUCs and other minis and I don't see anything cheaper.

For me when I consider the cost of my time the Raspi in my experience is much more expensive. I've enjoyed my experiment with the Raspi but honestly would have saved si much time and hassle if I'd just went with a cheap x86 machine. My first Raspi will also be my last.

What were you doing that wasted time?

They are so widely used and well documented that for typical uses, they are no more complicated to do than an x86, in my experience.

What small PCs would be suitable RPi alternatives? For many/most use cases they'd have to fit the same category -- so similar power consumption, similar physical size, passive cooling.

This is a fair point with how Pi prices have gone, and I don't think I'll be buying a pi5.

Good! You don’t need a Pi 5. You can still buy Pi 3b, which I use for many things successfully.