In terms of hardware, I can highly recommend Tinkerforge [1]. They support a wide range of sensors and actuators and can be controlled either via USB from a computer (all major platforms and many programming languages supported) or, for standalone devices, with an ESP32-based base-board called ESP32 Brick or ESP32 Ethernet Brick.
Since their products are open source (code AND schematics!) a design can be easily transferred to a custom PCB once the design is working.
Add either a web interface (native on the ESP32 or on your host computer if using a USB brick) or slap on a DearImgui frontend, and you have very powerful prototyping platform at your hands.