Taking a break from the NodeMCU sensor madness, I put together the router, "mini desktop" and a little monitor.

Mini PC: Minisforum U700.  I didn't pick this for any particular reason.  I found one for cheapish, liked that it had multiple ethernet ports and was pretty light.

10.5" portable monitor: "Eyoyo EM105" 10.5" portable.  Small, takes hdmi and mini hdmi, usb powered and it has a couple speakers and even a headphone jack, just in case.

Router: gl-inet AXT-1800.  It's a wonderful little thing that I think I'm going to buy another one of.  It's running open-wrt and does all manner of goofy things, including repeater mode, which allows it to use the wifi antenna as a client rather than a server.  I think it can do both, as well as VPNs and such. but that's not important to me yet.

Aside from the U700, everything is so far powered off a Wenter 11 port USB hub, with individually switchable ports.  I'm hoping I can get away with just using that.  But we'll see.

I put Ubuntu on the U-700 because it seemed like heresy to leave windows on the thing.  The monitor is just a monitor so that was no big deal.  So far I've just got baseline software on there.  Nothing too fancy yet, though I'm going to want to make it as goofy as is possible.

The router though, that required a little fiddling.

The AXT1800, even though it has openwrt on it NEEDED to be connected, once, to the internet over ethernet to grab firmware updates and such.  I could NOT set up Repeater mode without having done that.  It wouldn't see any SSIDs.  Just an overall mess.  But once I updated the firmware it worked just fine, connected to my vpn router just fine.

What I WANT to do is be able to programmatically add preferred networks to it.  But again, that can wait.  I'm just trying to get this stuff together and all in a box by contest end so I have SOMEthing to show. 

Next up:

- Jam this all in a case. (including cabling, holes in the side for a socket, etc.)

- Set up a pi4 as a data logging server

- Configure some kind of face plate to mount these screens to, because I have NO idea what I'm doing.

- Put SOME kind of purple lighting in the thing.  I suspect I've got a solution from Pimoroni on the way.  But we'll see.

It occurs to me that I'm almost certainly going to have a serious heat problem.