Before I joined Oxide I did a little fan-boying (as one does) and put together home lab components as best I could. You _could_ tie 3+ mini-PCs together and wrangle omicron into some semblance of working that way. But it would not be pretty.

However! You absolutely can use non-simulated Omicron: https://github.com/oxidecomputer/omicron/blob/main/docs/how-...

You'll get a single node control plane that's mostly workable, and be able to spin up VMs all day with it. That's what I did. Additionally, if you want to play with microcontrollers you can install Hubris onto STM32H753ZI dev boards! I have one connected to my TrueNAS server over UART and USBTTY for sensors, power management, and console.