Relatedly, I made an embedded product. I built a live CD (yes this was a while ago) for my employer with the entire development environment. As long as you can find an x86 machine with CD-ROM you could build, compile, test, and program using the exact environment I did twenty years ago.
Maybe today I'd do micropython on ESP32. Download text file from device, edit, upload back on.
There's at least one customer out there who has an RPi with NixOS on it from me. Probably still works to this day. It was the best use of NixOS I think I've ever found.
I've switched up to NUC-ish hardware which WAS cheap until recently. All the components just a bit higher quality than the lowest-bidder you get on the Pi. Run nixos on that and you've got a really solid platform.
If it's a custom Yocto thing or it involved buildroot at any state of provisioning it gets the moniker "quasi-embedded" to me. Doubly so if it never actually connects to the internet, unlike these water controllers, apparently.
Maybe today I'd do micropython on ESP32. Download text file from device, edit, upload back on.