Invensense has just released their new IMU 3000 (http://www.invensense.com/mems/gyro/imu3000.html). The chip is a three-axis gyro with on-board sensor fusion. When combined with a digital accelerometer it can output attitude estimates in quaternion format, meaning that no DCM or Kalman filtering is required on an external MCU.
Can we have a board with an accelerometer, IMU3000, simple ARM controller (i.e. LPC, STM32), and some servo control + PPM input? Bonus points for one or possibly two XBee connectors, which can act as ‘shields’ (telemetry, GPSBee, bluetooth bee, etc.). Also nice would be a 433MHz packet radio for built-in telemetry, as they are cheap, free to use everywhere, and have a long range.
By-the-by, Invensense sells breakout boards with an accelerometer for $60, which I think is damn nice for a complete IMU. FedEx shipping will kill me though, so if anyone in the Netherlands is willing so share the cost I’d be very interested. I plan on pairing it with an Ardupilot and have a look at how well it performs.