I have a 3B+ set up on my desk with a BitScope USB oscilloscope and the Arduino IDE running on it for my hardware projects, a 2B in a closet running Gitea and Docker as “build box” for my containers (it’s speedy enough when you move the Docker storage to an external USB HDD) and another 3B to run my 3D printer.

I’m not very keen on running ordinary services on them (my home automation setup runs on an ODROID, with Node—RED and homebridge Docker containers, which benefit from EMMC storage and twice the RAM as a Pi), but I’ve found the Pi to be a great platform for small self-contained tasks that really benefit from having a dedicated machine with a stable configuration.

Also, I’ve found them to be quite reliable from the 2B onwards (I even ran a Swarm cluster on a set of mine for a couple of years) — I have all the setup info for most of these on my GitHub profile at https://GitHub.com/rcarmo