so ive been messing around with a raspberry pi zero w for the past few weeks trying to get it to handle some of the more tedious parts of my shack setup. right now its just sitting there running a small python script that watches my IC-7300's CI-V output and auto-logs contacts into a CSV but i feel like im barely scratching the surface of what this thing can do.

the idea i had was to also tie in an arduino nano to handle some physical stuff — like maybe switch antenna relays based on the band the radio is on, or trigger a fan when the amp hits a certain temp. i know you can talk to the nano over serial from the pi pretty easily but ive never actually chained the two together in a real project like this and im not sure if there's a cleaner way to do it or if im just overcomplicating things.

anyone here done something similar? doesnt have to be exactly the same setup, just curious what kind of roadblocks people have run into when mixing pi and arduino stuff in the shack. also wondering if the zero w is even powerful enough for this or if i should grab a pi 3 or 4.

yeah i did almost exactly this about two years ago, was using a pi 3B+ though not the zero. the serial communication between the pi and arduino is honestly not that bad once you get pyserial sorted out, the main headache i had was baud rate mismatches taking forever to figure out because i kept forgetting to set it the same on both ends, pretty embarrassing in retrospect.

for the antenna switching i ended up using a small relay board that the arduino controls directly based on commands from the pi. works great, latency is basically nothing you'd ever notice. the temp monitoring thing i did slightly differently — i just used a DS18B20 sensor wired straight to the pi's GPIO and skipped the arduino for that part. no real reason you couldn't do it either way though.

the zero w might feel a little sluggish if you're also trying to run a GUI or anything heavier alongside it, but for headless scripts talking serial and doing logging it should be totally fine. i'd still maybe grab a pi 3 if you find one cheap just for the headroom.

the CI-V automation stuff is cool but have you looked at hamlib at all? might save you some wheel reinventing depending on how deep you want to go with the 7300 integration. not trying to steer you off your own project just — its already got the band polling stuff handled and a lot of people pipe it into their own scripts.