I recognize the "esp32 perched on top of a circuit board" from the picture. I've got a couple of those at my house right now, I'm on the second version of one board and the third of another. I think I'm going down a very similar road for a different product. Would you be willing to some paid advising? I'm an EE so I don't need hand-holding on the actual boards or programming, really just looking for more information on everything else around the edges. Either way, thanks for the article. It was nice to get some validation of my development process.

I can/try to give you some advice if you need - email is in my bio. I did a semi successful CrowdSupply project based around the ESP32S3.