Ansible also comes with its own secrets manager ansible-vault, which you can also use to store your secrets in an encrypted file.

I assume some sort of DSL was meant by ‘phone line’. In which case one could always use an external DSL modem, then any supported router should work. Or one could choose one of the few supported devices with built-in DSL modem, but make sure the modem supports the DSL standard you require.

Speaking of which, I always had issues with WiFi stability on OpenWrt. Maybe I was just unlucky, but I had issues with both Qualcomm Atheros (ath9k and ath10k) and Mediatek based routers. I couldn’t find anything regarding stability of the WiFi in their hardware database. Is there a list of devices that are known to run reliably?

Mine runs a little under 18 W with one 8 port managed switch, a DSL modem, CM4-based router, a tiny Wifi AP, and an Intel Celeron J4105 based mini PC server.

BirdNet-Pi is awesome. Highly recommended for anyone who likes birds. The BirdNet app for phones is also nice.
Btw, BirdNet-Pi also works fine on the non-plus Raspberry Pi 3.