[danshaffer]

i'm working on avrs (specifically the 169, as found in the butterfly) for my summer project. butterfly is a nice $22 board with a screen, speaker, etc., plus open-source starter code for all of the built-in functions. you don't need an expensive programmer, just solder up a three-pin connector to serial (i can send you in the right direction if you decide to go this route). AVRs are more powerful and built for C, while PICs are generally built for Assembly, which is a pain and not really relevant to FIRST at all (I hope).

Hope this helps!