First things first we need a breakdown of things we want to accomplish. In rough order

1. Device working, get an OS image running on a Spark system board. 
2. Vision, I want my device to be able to see the world around it.  Going with the simple USB web cam interface.
3. Distance, I want to be able to tell how far away things are, this can be IR / Sonar / touch.
4. Interaction (IO), this is the ability to manipulate the outside world, this can be motors / servos / lights.
5. Communication, I want the device to report status / telemetry and receive direction from another device / PC.  This could be black box / wired / wireless.

I will be working on each of these separately to simplify the development process and build up a set of building blocks that can be assembled to make a whole.

Code will be written in C++, and samples will be posed as I finish them.