Best micro controller for hobby programming with PLC experience

[JoshCanHearYou]

Hello, I have been working at an internship in a manufacturing environment and I've been programming some allen bradley PLCs using ladderlogic and found it really intuitive and interesting. I want to do some stuff like this at home but obviously I can't use the allen bradley stuff since its like $20,000 lol. What are some recommendations for like $100-200 just to mess around with for fun? 

 

edit: im not an electrician so it cant be 240v 

[manikyath]

i'm not aware of any stuff that is designed to work with ladderlogic, not at a hobby budget at least.

 

EDIT: a quick google did unveil this project:

 

[_Omega_]

To be honest id just use Arduino boards you have boards and modules for everything you want to do and there are some "cheap" PLCs based on Arduino as well. But like it is, most PLCs use other or proprietary programming languages. I dont think that there are Hobby boards using ladderlogic... Arduino uses C/C++

[_Omega_]

Just found that there is an IDE for Arduino where you can program it using an ladder diagram.

 

https://www.arduino.cc/pro/software-plc-ide

 

Its for use with the Arduino opta PLC wich "only" costs 160 $

https://store.arduino.cc/products/opta-rs485?pr_prod_strat=jac&pr_rec_id=9484408b4&pr_rec_pid=7842298757271&pr_ref_pid=7861251080343&pr_seq=uniform

[FlyingPotato_is_taken]

Generally: STM32Nucleo for $20.

 

Looking at ladderlogic there are some solutions for STM32 but a TI MSP340 launchpad is could be the better answer: https://github.com/taleswsouza/LadderApp?tab=readme-ov-file