Finally got an Arduino. If you don't know what that is, it's a tiny microcontroller board based around an Atmel ATMega328 (at least on the newest models) microcontroller chip. The Vex robotics platform has its own microcontroller but it is expensive and requires an expensive programming cable (I have the controller but without the cable it is only good for R/C control). The $30 Arduino is interfaced to the laptop using a MAX232 RS-232 to TTL serial adapter (the Arduino supports USB but my old laptop only has one USB port which I'm using for the Xbox 360 controller). The LED flashes GREEN when it receives a good serial "frame" (4 bytes; 255, motor1, motor2, 200) and RED when the serial frame fails (first and last byte aren't 255 and 200). This is because simply sending two values would get mixed up between the two motors and it wouldn't work correctly. The hardest part was actually getting the PC to read the Xbox controller, the Arduino side was fairly easy to get working. I plan to eventually get a netbook and use USB and WiFi to drive it around the common area from my desktop :) Sorry about the resolution...forgot my camera was in the lowest possible settings :( I'll upload more videos as I make progress on the robot (just got Arduino yesterday).