This isn't quite DIY, since the Skybotix coax platform costs $5,000 (!), but if you want to run Willow Garage's cool Robot Operating System (ROS), you're going to need some serious computational horsepower, such as an onboard Gumstix linux processor board.
We wrote about this before, but I Heart Robotics has an update:
"There seems to be something about Zurich and Micro Air Vechicles, maybe it's the alpine air. This video shows the Skybotix CoaX helicopter being tele-operated through ROS. On the software side of things the CoaX, appears to be running eRos, or something similar, on-board aGumstix processor. It has basic support for running opencv on-board and is capable of transmitting images as a ROS topic. It's not clear how the IMU and optical flow data is made available in ROS, but overall their documentation looks good.
On the hardware side, the CoaX is equipped with both a pressure altimeter, for outdoor use, and a sonar altimeter, for indoor flight. It has two dsPIC microcontrollers, IMU and a Bluetooth or Zigbee radio. Optionally it can be purchased with a Gumstix Overo, WiFi and lateral IR sensors. The 340mm rotor diameter makes it capable of flight through small apertures and it's low center of gravity makes it aerodynamically stable."
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