Home Automation has gone mainstream

[dhouston]

The ESP8266 is supported by the Arduino IDE. Using something like the WeMos D1 mini can greatly simplify creating WiFi enabled sensors for light, temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, and more.
https://www.wemos.cc/product
And, if you are a programming neophyte, Basic4Arduino (free) also supports the ESP8266.
https://www.b4x.com/b4r.html

[bkenobi]

Arduino's are cheap enough that I'd recommend picking one up (a clone works just like the official if you want to go even cheaper).  But, the other boards are also pretty cool.  I have a few Arduino projects and purchased a couple ESP boards to allow WiFi by moving the old projects over.  The learning curve has been steep and I haven't made much progress on them, but doing simple tutorials is pretty fun anyway.  Heck, there are plenty of Instructables for various projects that can get you a full DIY project based on instructions that actually do something beyond the simple blinking light tutorial.