I recently got my hands on the tiny Xiao ESP32S3 + Wio sx1262 combo :
This is pretty good value at a bit shy of $10 USD. I have already published the 'Repeater lite' firmware for these here. Please refer to the 'readme.txt', but for this firmware I've started including two .bin variants:
* If you have a device that is fresh from the factory, or has some other firmware on it, flash the -first-time.bin firmware to OFFSET 0x0. (This is a FULL install, and blows away any data)
* If you are updating/upgrading the firmware from previous Ripple version, flash the -update.bin firmware to OFFSET 0x10000 (This will preserve the data/config already on the device)
Soldering
This hardware does require a bit of soldering, although you can get away with zero soldering if you use a 5V USB power source of some kind. To power from a 1S lithium, you need to solder to the small contacts on the back (see diagram below). Also, there is no built-in battery monitoring, so unfortunately if you want to monitor the battery you have to wire up your own voltage divider circuit, using two equal resistors (around 100K recommended). And, you can also (optionally) wire up a BME280 sensor if you want to be able to monitor if your repeater is currently cooking in the sun :-)
Config
These can now be easily setup and monitored remotely using the standalone T-Deck devices, or you can do the setup and config using the Ripple Commander android app.
Upcoming...
I will also be porting the 'full/Post Office' repeater firmware to the Xiao S3. This will enable all the cool store-and-forward mailboxes, shared documents, and OTA firmware updates.