Hi all. I have a project for school where we have to design a fire escape system for a sky scraper. I think my group is convinced that lowering a car with eggs on it to the ground and having it drive to the offical safe zone is the best idea. I am having trouble figuring out the best way to do the car controls. I was thinking stepper motors because I have a few and then I wouldn't need an encoder to measure distance, but I am having trouble finding stepper controlers. I am also trying to firuge the best microcontroller to use as brains. I can get MSP430's from TI as samples, but I have never used them and don't know how well they will work for this. I also don't know if they need a special programmer. Maybe AVR's would be better. Any advice is appricated.