"He was examining two devices on the roof while wirelessly conversing with a minicomputer a few hundred feet away..."
What's a minicomputer?
Maybe a raspberry pi could be called a minicomputer today. It meant something a little smaller than a mainframe in decades past.
I like that, it really works well. Repurposing yesterday's jargon for today's innovations.
I still think the writer should work on that word choice though....
Replying since I can't edit my comment any longer: someone deleted their reply to me, but they pointed out Raspberry Pi and Arduinos are already known as Nanocomputers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanocomputer