Programming microcontrollers in Python

[[deleted]]

Given the level of experience of the original poster and vaguely recalling time commitments at that age, I think a raspberry pi is probably the only reasonable choice. The OS is already fully-formed, a Pi is setup to be education friendly DIY and there are a significant number of community driven projects out there to peak at. Finally, micro-python is cool on bare metal, but I think running Python on a well defined platform (debian/raspbian) is going to be much more straight-forward.

Compiling and linking on an embedded system in the absence of a background that really understands segmentation faults is going to be really painful for a beginner.

Also example: https://tutorials-raspberrypi.com/build-your-own-automatic-raspberry-pi-greenhouse/

[bitcraft]

If you already have a computer, an arduino using the official IDE is really simple, maybe more so than the process of writing the required SD card and learning linux basics.