this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2026
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Seems like the ESPs are filling the raspi niche anymore.
God the PiFM software was amazing. You could broadcast anything from 1-250MHZ with just a wire stuck to a GPIO pin and it was actually decent. It was essentially a software defined radio transmitter for $25 at the time. It was absolutely the most fun I've ever had with a $25 purchase
They're just better in many ways. Raspberry pi was clunky and bulky.
I got 3 raspberry pis over time when the 4 was brand new. Mainly because I didn't know what i was doing but also because that's what I knew. Everything was made for the pi, the pi had the most tutorials and community everything just made sense.
But now pis are around 200 dollars and only really good when you need an actual little computer. But working with micro controllers everything's just so much straight forward. I hated working with the pi and zero, if you ever had to debug it was like a 10 minute processes due to booting and how slow it was.
With the esp32 they just boot right away, no loading up a operating system you plug it in, see if it works and if doesn't flash it over air and do it again. It just does what it needs to and in many ways better.
Would agree with that. I have a handful of ESPs now and don't really use raspis for much these days. Well except for my home assistant box.
Do you run Linux on those ESPs?