The computer runs control and telemetry programs. The control program reads the input from a game-pad and sends control commands to the copter. We also have programs that can configure the copter regulation parameters and log the measurements in order to make easier to tune the regulation.
All the development is done on Windows and Linux. Indeed we are 3 to work on this project, two of us work on Linux and one is mainly on Windows. Using FLOSS permit to handle that in a very effective way. We are mainly using the GCC compiler from CodeSourcery for the copter program compilation, GNU Make for the project build, Mercurial for the source control, and python/pyusb for the communication with the copter. All these softwares works seamlessly on both Linux and Windows and made the project pretty easy to handle.
The distance between the motors (horizontally and vertically) is around 8 cm and the total weight is around 20 g.