Maybe, Beckhoff are cheap, got a good programming environment and programming software is free, plus their simulator is so good you don't need hardware until co

Maybe, Beckhoff are cheap, got a good programming environment and programming software is free, plus their simulator is so good you don't need hardware until commissioning. In Australia you can buy them at Blackwoods (Plumbing and general supplies with over 60 stores) who hold good stocking levels. And there are others, Omron, Mitsubishi, Wago etc. Allen Bradley is unreasonably expensive below a certain scale that isn't small and Siemens is not much better - you can easily blow 20k on just a single CPU module, and TIA Portal on a preconfigured laptop is 20k. Rockwell (for AB programming) has changed to subscription model, but last time I had to buy Studio 5000 is was 10k for ladder and another 10k for the other languages. Plus a PLC won't run of a battery for a month, or a year, but a microprocessor will, it is all about your use case.