Anyone can buy stuff from most suppliers like RS, Digikey and Mouser, Farnell have CPC that anyone can buy stuff from too, at least in the UK this is the case.

The other manufacturers I mentioned also target their development boards at business applications to trial devices before designing them into a product, but a competent hobbyist would have no problem using them, it's just at a much more involved level than Arduino etc. The HAL libraries and code generation that come with the manufacturer IDEs/SDKs now make the gap pretty small to just get started though.

If I was going to recommend one manufacturer then I'd say an STM32 Nucleo or Discovery board within your budget would be a good place to get started with this typel of microcontroller board.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Ill have to take a look if I can find a local supplier, not sure what the post fees are going to be from UK right now.

Thanks for the recommendation and the extra info, appreciate it!