When I got the mbed I hooked it up and ran the default test program provided on this site. I then spent a couple hours playing with the LEDs, trying different ways to flash them, and programming techniques.

I have a basic stamp robot, and considered using the mbed as the controller for it. This required several things: Servo control and a way to mount the mbed, among other things. I didnt want to get too far ahead of myself and decided to take "baby steps" to learn about the mbed and its capabilities. On the weekend I ran down to J & K electronics and bought some parts to make a breakout board for the mbed. I purchased a PCB with 100s of holes, and pads on one side, and found .1" single inline sockets for the mbed to mate to. By carefully using a jewelers saw I cut the 40 pin inline socket in half to make the two pieces I needed to mount the mbed. I soldered them to the PCB, along with other .1" pin connectors for external power for the mbed and servos, and two servo connections. I wired it all up - The servos got their control signal from pins 21 and 22 of the mbed. I use an external battery to power the servos, separate from the mbed power supply. I imported the servo library and used a bit of the sample code to get a continuous rotation servo working in about 1 minute.