> Its much easier to program for than any embedded board.
Indeed. I work in both MCUs and full-featured Linux environments and there is zero value to using the former for non-safety critical, non-power constrained, low precision applications. Running a sprinkler system on an RPi is an entirely reasonable choice: you have ample storage for history, trivially simple remote control using a variety of protocols and media and ample compute to operate high level languages and run easily maintained programs, including nice-to-haves like continuous integration of public weather data to optimize your schedule against prevailing rainfall.
Can you shoehorn all that into a ESP32 + micropython or whatever? Sure. I'll bet someone already has. And they spent 10x the time it would have taken otherwise. At least.
Indeed. I work in both MCUs and full-featured Linux environments and there is zero value to using the former for non-safety critical, non-power constrained, low precision applications. Running a sprinkler system on an RPi is an entirely reasonable choice: you have ample storage for history, trivially simple remote control using a variety of protocols and media and ample compute to operate high level languages and run easily maintained programs, including nice-to-haves like continuous integration of public weather data to optimize your schedule against prevailing rainfall.
Can you shoehorn all that into a ESP32 + micropython or whatever? Sure. I'll bet someone already has. And they spent 10x the time it would have taken otherwise. At least.