I used a 7.4" display from Pervasive, about $50USD. It's a simple development board with an easy to drive controller. All the software was in Python, with a f

I used a 7.4" display from Pervasive, about $50USD. It's a simple development board with an easy to drive controller. All the software was in Python, with a few performance-critical bits in Cython. I used wire wrapping to hook things up, and it was not difficulty, even though I'm a programmer with no previous hardware experience.