If you guys want to really start ballin with the big dogs, you should check out the MSP430, but that kinda takes some serious education and development tools to implement. It's kinda worth it though, I took a course at the local tech school to use it and the thing is crazy its just like "oh hey, i do absolutely everything you could ever want a microcontroller to do, oh and by the way there are like 20 million variartions of me for almost every kind of specialized task" downside, they are like $11+ just for a standalone chip, generally about 80 pins, and only come in SOIC