Exercise 1

Create simple speed/distance meter which counts pulses from exernal port (say from infrared proximity sensor) and display result on character LCD display. With sensor conected to bike's wheel you would get pulse for every revolution and program should display speed and distance (assuming specific distance per pulse). Steps:

Check sensor. For this you need to connect just power to the sensor: sensor has a LED which light up when someting is very close.
Check that you can read the sensor from the program.
Check that you can display on the LCD
Write actual processing (add some averaging for more stable results).

For time base you can use millis() from libmaple library.