The ESP32 does everything a Pi Pico does, but costs less and lasts 100x longer on batteries ...

Volos Projects recently showcased an easy-to-reproduce, inexpensive DIY ESP32-S3 Internet radio based on a Waveshare ESP32-S3-LCD-1.54 development board ...

In this video I'm walking you through the steps I took to make a standalone version of my pellet level monitoring sensor that is not directly connected to Home Assistant but it functions separately .