ESPHome looks like a really handy way to get configure ESP8266, ESP32 and Raspberry Pi RP2040 boards with various sensors and then get them integrated with your Home Assistant setup. The sensors and boards are configured with relatively simple YAML. It's obviously more difficult than buying something from the one ecosystem (i.e: Xiaomi or Google or HomeKit whatever) but by choosing the boards and sensors yourself, you can get exactly what you want, at a low price, without having to do any coding. This blog post has a good explanation of the different ESP chips and boards out there.
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