Stop it Raspberry Pi 5 The purchase from last year was a mistake. Raspberry Pi has raised prices three times since December 2025. With the price revision in April, some models were selling for 83% more than the retail price. The 16GB Pi 5Sold for 120 dollars, after the increase in price, it is now 205 dollars. The company, like many others, pointed to DRAM shortages as the reason for global price increases in several products.
I started using it ESP32 boards about six months ago. Not because I’m in love with microcontrollers. This was because the cost of Pis had risen to unimaginable levels for my projects. When I opened my smart home to save money, I didn’t expect it to be remarkably reliable with microcontrollers. Here’s what still surprises me about my new smart home, and it’s worth explaining.
After restarting the Raspberry Pi, my whole house would go black
An overloaded SD card ran my entire smart home
For a while, my Raspberry Pi 4B was running everything. This Launched Home Assistanta few automation scripts and a USB Zigbee switch for sensors. All shared the same CPU and microSD card. This was the only point of failure. I didn’t think much of it because the setup worked most of the time.
Problems appeared unexpectedly: a software update, a resource increase, or a reboot that took longer than expected. Suddenly nothing in my smart home responded. I had to re-pair manually Zigbee devices it fell. Smart lights stopped responding to automation and presence detection went blind. I kept making one after another until it hit me. Everything depended on one box staying healthy.
Although the ESP32s were cheaper, they weren’t decisive. One board works as a motion sensor, and the other Bluetooth proxyand the third as a weather sensor node. If one of these boards goes offline, I only lose one function. It does not affect the whole house. So I ended up putting everything together on a general purpose computer. Instead, I started looking at each function as its own small and easily modifiable unit.
- Storage
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MicroSD card slot
- CPU
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Arm Cortex-a72 (quad-core, 1.8 GHz)
- Memory
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1GB, 2GB, 4GB or 8GB LPDDR4
- Operating system
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Raspberry Pi (Official)
The Raspberry Pi 4 is a single-board computer that can be used for many different DIY computing projects, from programming to retro game emulation.
Smart home automations have become remarkably fast
I never noticed until I was left behind
My ESP32 nodes report state changes directly to Home Assistant as they happen, whereas my old setup relied on polling at set intervals. This introduced a small, constant delay between something happening and the house reacting.
It was only a fraction of a second, but the difference was noticeable. Turning on smart lights now feels instant instead of waiting a second, and that’s how fast it is. vending machines work. I felt it most when I walked into my bedroom after dark and the light was half a second behind me. Now it lights up as soon as you walk through the door.
Automations that avoid the configuration problem kick in without hesitation. Once the speed difference became apparent, there was no turning back. I lost faith in automation when I didn’t double check the microcontroller nodes.
I stopped restarting anything and my home runs smoothly
Router logs have become more predictable
My old Pi 4 often needed a reboot about once every two weeks to get everything working. Otherwise, the lag will accelerate, as it does for anyone running a general-purpose OS on a device that stays on for months at a time. Nothing broke, and the longer it took, the less responsive it became.
On the other hand, my ESP32 nodes have not needed this kind of intervention at all. They all run the same software, do what they’re told to do, and continue to work without a hiccup. So I stopped paying attention to them because they rarely slow down.
The same pattern appeared on my network and my router logs became more predictable. Some update checks, handshakes, and other things still appear, but they no longer seem random. All ESPHome devices they are almost silent and behave reliably until they say something out of the ordinary. The general conversation that usually arose from Pi stopped. My router now deals with quieter ESP32 boards that are easier to manage and troubleshoot.
- Brand
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AITRIP
- Connection Features
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UART, USB
The ESP32 is a fantastic development board that combines robust features with an affordable price. Although cheaper than Arduino and Raspberry Pi Pico, it outperforms most of its competitors. Plus, the ESP32 even has built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on every board, making the microcontroller great for projects where you can’t keep it physically connected to your computer all the time.
I didn’t retire the Raspberry Pi, I repurposed it
He is still performing for a job
With the ESP32 devices running the smart home show, I haven’t completely removed the Raspberry Pi. I ported Home Assistant from the Pi to a tiny mini PC USB Zigbee dongle. This split was as significant as the ESP32 migration. The Pi was never suited for automation and network monitoring. So separating them removed the excuse to slow down the other.
Now the Pi takes network monitoring seriously with Pi OS Lite. I Start NetAlertX To monitor any suspicious devices connected to the network. Runtime pings Kum and reports the availability of my home server and self-hosted services. Pi-hole and Unbound Working together on DNS filtering and recursive resolution. Keeping all four together saves me from checking four different magazines. I’m only checking one set now. Pi doesn’t have any intelligent tasks for him. Instead of replacing the Pi, I gave it a job I should have done a while ago.
Turns out the price hikes did me a favor
I wasn’t going to build a more robust smart home. My intention was not to spend $205 on a board that cost about half as much. But the budget panic did something I hadn’t planned for. This forced me to stop treating a single Raspberry Pi and treat me smart home as a system with actual points of failure.
Now the mini PC has a fixed hub, a few single-purpose microcontroller nodes running around it, and the Pi does a job. The cheaper option wasn’t really a win. was stronger. It only took the $205 price tag to tip me off. You don’t need one of your own to check if your setup has the same blind spot.
- CPU
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Arm Cortex-A76 (quad-core, 2.4 GHz)
- Memory
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Up to 8 GB LPDDR4X SDRAM
- Operating system
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Raspberry Pi OS (Official)
- Ports
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2× USB 3.0, 2× USB 2.0, Ethernet, 2x micro HDMI, 2× 4-lane MIPI adapters, PCIe Gen 2.0 interface, USB-C, 40-pin GPIO header
The Raspberry Pi is back, and the fifth iteration of the SBC is far more capable than the older models. From the new quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 CPU, support for dual monitor setups at 4K 60Hz, and a dedicated power button, there’s a lot to love about this palm-sized computer.
