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Pi4 2GB with power source, SD card, case, fan is like $100. You can have nice Atom MiniPC for that. Or old PC from ebay...

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But these are used, cheap new Atom miniPC doesn't have GPIO, and brand new Atom SBCs with GPIO are more $$$ with the same SoC compared to miniPC since they aren't mass produced. A used Pi with sdcard/case/fan is much less than $40.

USB GPIO dongles are a cheap addon to any x86 PC, e.g. "Adafruit General Purpose USB to GPIO" at https://www.adafruit.com/product/2264

These tend to have buffer underrun issues causing latency in the order of seconds, requiring deeper knowledge in the embedded field to mitigate.

Most educational content that involve the Pi tend to use system GPIO libraries and integration, making other SBCs or USB expansion boards difficult to use for newcomers. The Pi is a platform other than the hardware, their forum should be more welcoming though.

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