If it uses more material than required for the job it's over-built and under-engineered. Your solution seems to be massively that.
Also, what positive safety control loop could a standing desk use?
I have yet to actually build anything that controls hardware, but I have been lurking, reading about microcontrollers, collecting little bits.
An actual application, a solution to a real problem or neat project, is the best way to make it real.
So like a led (light) is one lab. The next might be a photo sensor (signal with amount of light). After these two labs you can now make a night light. Or a rave strobe.
Do the switch or button lab and you can turn it on or off or change the pattern. After 30 labs you have a pretty good idea of what to do.
Now buy an esp32 that works with a breadboard and if you know basic http you now have an iot device.
I recently hooked an esp32 to a dht22 and started graphing temp in my gourmet mushroom enclosure in about an hour of watching baseball. Just sends data to influx and grafana on an rpi data hub
If I were making and selling some IoT hardware or if I wanted to re-use the RasPi for something else in my house, it would definitely make sense to move to an ESP/Arduino
I started with a raspberry pi, but then discovered esp32 with an lcd display for just a few bucks https://www.amazon.com/LILYGO-T-Display-Bluetooth-Developmen....
Plus your standing desk could also be a pi-hole for wifi security.
Replace the ESP8266 with some Arduino clone for 3.50 € and you'll even be more beginner friendly...
Cost, power consumption, reliability, performance, security, weight, and volume, to name just a few.
I really dislike the attitude that we should use the biggest hammer we can find for any size of nail just because we can.
Theres a reason multitools are every day carry, and its not that they are the perfect tool for the job.
The ESP8266 is a product developed by a Chinese company, which would be reason for some to avoid it from a security standpoint.
Clever though!
Many times, an arduino or esp32 would be more than capable with considerably less power usage.
