Is there a way to get a Raspberry Pi to emulate an ESP32?Having used both the rPi and the ESP32 I would recommend going with the rPi as it is a complete controller with lots of I/O to control things.
I recently completed a test stand built on a rPi that runs some high current relays while sensing 20 channels of current draw. What is cool is you can write and run the program all on the same computer.
While I also like the ESP32 I keep that to IOT things like the 4 channel RGBW controller that runs the under counter LEDs in my kitchen.
I'd like to work on this project leveraging an existing Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB)
SwitchBot MQTT ESP32 Bridge (Home Assistant)