On Monday all of my motors and motor controllers arrived, so I went out and bought some balsa & basswood and worked up a really simple frame to put things on.
Then I wired up one of the controllers to find the rotation direction of the motors, plugged the battery in the wrong way, and heard a fairly loud, brief, pop. A little smoke rolled out from behind the shrink-wrap, and I swear I heard it whimper. This was around 3am, and was the most compelling evidence up to this point that I really needed to go to bed. (Right after I ordered another motor controller)
Today I wired up two of the remaining controllers to the brain, and wrote the code to mix the aileron and elevator channles into the motor thrusts when hovering. It went so quickly it was almost a letdown. I’ve now successfully hovered (and steered) the rear half.
I think the only piece of the puzzle that’s left (and it’s a big piece) is adding in the gyro contributions. I already have valid readings from them, it’s just going to be a matter of keeping track of how fast I’m moving and in which direction, deciding where I actually think I should be, and feeding the difference into the aileron and elevator inputs. Sounds simple enough, right?