I was needing some help looking for cheap options. Any pointer or suggestions for a beginner are appreciated thanks.
For a reality check, you can buy an arduino for $30 + postage. In the end you will probably spend much more than this building from scratch. Building from scratch will be a good learning process, but a lot of that learning will be finding out what doesn't work as expected, and the extra parts that will have to be purchased that you don't know about now. Been there, done that with similar projects.