Board Guide
Here are my recommanded boards, to use with the Arduino Software.
(Prices are from aliexpress france with shipping included)
Table of contents
ESP32
ESP32 are powerful board for their price ! They can be program as easily as an Arduino Uno, and have WiFi and Bluetooth (LE).
M5 StickC - 14€
This ESP32 from M5Stack doesn't cost much for what it offers.
It has a case, a LCD color screen, an accelerometer, a battery, a microphone, an infrared led, some GPIO, and a groove port to directly plug components available in their store.
A good way to start with the ESP32 !
Lolin32 (Wemos clone) - 5€
Wemos doesn't sell this esp32 anymore, but it is still a reference.
If you want to easily make projects working on battery, without thinking too much, it is a pretty good choice, it only use 100ua in sleep mode.
Here is another ESP32 I like, it uses a little more power then the lolin32 in sleep mode (200ua) but it is smaller.
ESP8266
ESP32 costs too much for you ? The old version are far from being obsolete but are also less powerful (but a lot more then a Arduino Uno) , doesn't have bluetooth and less pins.
However, there are a lots of software availables for it like ESPEasy , ESP8266_ArtNetNode etc... which aren't available for an ESP32.
D1 Mini (Wemos clone) - 3€
It is hard to buy a cheaper board, but this esp8266 is really useful.
You can find a shields for it with a lots of accessory (battery/sensors etc...) to easily add functionnalities.
Need more range ? You can add your own antenna on this version and it has 16mb of memory instead of 4m!
This version has a convenient form, each pins has a VCC/GND pins and the square format is really useful to put it inside a box.
Arduino (clone)
Most Arduino boards clone aren't really interesting today, you can pretty much do the same thing with an ESP (and have WiFi which can be deactivate) and far more processing power!
However, one board have a functionality that the ESP (for now) doesn't have.
Another perk, if your computer is really slow, upload is faster with these board.
Pro Micro 5v (Arduino clone)
This clone can make your board recognized as any USB devices (Keyboard / Mouse / Midi Keyboard / Gamepad)
DM Strong Series Micro USB Pro 8€
This version has a convenient form, each pins has a VCC/GND pins and the square format is really useful to put it inside a box.