I would stick with boards that run the ESP8266, ESP8285 or ESP32 platform. Some good ones are Adafruit Feather Huzzah, NodeMCU (from MANY companies online), Wemos D1 Mini’s and their clones, etc. These will have the wifi built in so no need for additional modules. Also, they run on 5v instead of 9-12 and use a standard micro usb cable. So, you can power them with an old cell phone charger. Take a look at the ST_Anything project and the OmniThing Project. The folks up here on the forum are going to be a HUGE help. If your background isn’t in coding though, don’t expect yourself to learn it overnight. It can be very frustrating sometimes to get something to work that you know should but it just won’t. Take from someone’s who’s felt like through some of this stuff out the window and giving up entirely on it. 