So I decided just to order a bunch of parts and build a robot. It's not going to be anything original or anything, just a Tamiya tread set, universal plate, gear box, a baby orangutan from Pololu, a servo motor and an IR distance sensor. It'll move around, look around with the sensor attached to the servo, and try not to run into anything. I also got another really tiny distance sensor I hope to use to make sure it doesn't fall down the stairs.
When I was taking everything out of the box, I was kind of disappointed. I thought they forgot to ship the Baby Orangutan, and just shipped the headers for it. But I was wrong, the Baby Orangutan is so damn small, it hid behind the headers. It's crazily small, so small that I'm going to have a hard time soldering to it. I'm not sure if I want to solder the headers to it, or just solder the leads I need onto it.
But the first step is not to use the Baby Orangutan, I'm going to learn how to use the tiny LCD display I got for debugging purposes, the distance censor and the servo motor. I could use the baby, but the Arduino is probably easier to work with, so I'll just start with that for now. My goal for tonight is just to get the distance sensor and LCD running, with the LCD displaying data from the sensor.