Hi /r/Arduino,

So, Ive keep hearing all about arduino's, but never actually had one or found good data sheets on them. Also, in looking at sparkfun's website, every single thing seems to be retired that I could find... Where should I go to find good resources and where can I go to buy them? Are there alternatives out there now that are cheaper but provide the same level of control?

More specifically: the project I'm looking to do is some Ethernet controlled (or ideally wifi enabled arduino, which sounds awesome if the support is built in) that essentially allows me to have some logic and voltage control off of it (just a single pin even and i could wire into some transistors and make a power supply that turns on and off). (Looking to set up these small little boxes next to valves in lab, and then using wifi send commands to open and close them, or to control them at various rates and stuff.) I figured arduino's were the easy solution, rather than buying some PICs and designing PCBs myself.

Quick on background: I am a graduate student in physics now, who for undergrad also got a degree in electrical engineering with a focus on embedded systems. I've done lots of work with pspice, verilog, etc. and have worked with FPGAs and PICs alike. The technology isn't the problem, just.. finding good resources on what is available with what features is the main problem.

Also, I tired looking through the links on the sidebar, and got kinda lost quickly, mostly because I don't know the nomenclature for the arduino world...

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!