For anyone else looking to get started with Anvil plus the Pico W, here is the post by @meredydd to get you started:
Also if you aren’t really into soldering, you can just start with jumper wires, a breadboard, and look for a Pico WH or a Pico W “with headers” pre soldered for you.
It really is as simple as following some instructions found online, plugging in wires to sensors and using a python library to tell the wire pins what to do using python logic.