I decided that I want to make 2 different Ethernet/Wifi modules With different purpose. With Raspberry PI it will be 3, but RPI and ESP32 overlap in functionality.
ESP32 with Ethernet/Wifi/Bluetooth is a very attractive “Connector” solution where I can add more connections by adding multiple Hat’s. I can sadly only add a single Raspberry PI since it only support Half Duplex Master on the SPI.
HLK-7688A is attractive because it is a switch/router. I can probably do this with Raspberry PI as well, but with HLK-7688A it was straight forward to connect with the OpenWRT package. I am not so sure with interconnection to the backbone, but that is work to do. I have to admit that I am still a bit undecided on HLK-7688A because support and information is not that great, but we will see. And even if Raspberry PI can be used as a Switch/Router it still have to deal With the Ethernet/Wifi IO bandwidth. It maked perfectly sense to offload this to a HLK7688A based module.
The main attraction with HLK-7688A is the switch/router capability. If I connect using Ethernet or Wifi I will need that regardless and having it as part of a control module is very attractive.