It's the weekend! So today a big effort to try and find the controller! All I want to do is hook up some power and take a few reading's, then I can start to make things happen.
For the radio I have 2 cards with Transceiver on chip and 4 cards with just the transceiver, I will use a transceiver with chip for the helicopter and probably two transceiver only chips for the controllers. I hope to detail the control units this weekend, one will be hand held and one in a case as a base station.
Hope to get alot more pictures up as well and give some detail regarding the brain, if any one wants to recommend accelerometers etc I would be grateful.
I could also do with finding some cheap and small ultra sonic distance sensors, the one I have is a bit heavy, also some very very small servo's would be good.

 

OK I have the controller! yay, it needs a temporary antenna though, the original plan was too build a hand controller using the joysticks from this one, now I have it in my sticky little hands I am not so sure, I am now thinking I might just take the electronics out and replace them with my own, I will also need to add some switches, there is also going to be a ground station, this will display the video and data from the helicopter,I also hope to add in some flying controls, I have always intended to have a key operated switch that defines which controller is in command.
Because I cant find the helicopter charger and because the battery is dead anyway, I am going to set up a bench rig for the copter and run it without the blades on, for power I will first use a 12V ATX supply so I can measure the current drawn, if its below 5A I can use my HP bench PSU for power at 11.1V, the main idea is to get reading of how the motors interact, I want/need to know what the offset speed is between the top and bottom rotor's.
If I use this controller modified, then I will also change the battery system from disposable AA batteries, to rechargeable ones and maybe even a fixed source to the ground station, I am hoping now that I can get going.