Robots are cool, so check out [Atlin Anderson]’s Spiderbot (video, embedded below) which can be made with 3D printed parts, hobby servos, and ESP32-CAM module for control and a first-person view.

If you want to maintain detailed logs of the environmental parameters, you can host a database on your Raspberry Pi and ...

The microcontrollers are cheap, the sensors are cheap, even the motors are cheap ... For the controller, [Dimitris] says the ESP32 is hard to beat by pretty much any metric you want to use.