Re:microcontrollers (Score 2, Interesting)

If you don't feel like spending too much time mucking around with assembly or C, or dropping 50 dollars on a programmer, or putting together all the supporting circuitry around the chip (the clock, adc, etc.), then you should probably try the BX-24. It's programmed in a Basic environment (which I guess could be either good or bad depending on who's using it), so it's dead easy to get something up and running really quickly.