I have to say that this is really, really cool concept. In the case of a typical PIC microcontroller, you also need a special piece of hardware to program it. By comparison, in the case of the PICAXE, ...

After struggling with the ‘245 for some time, [James] decided to swich out the BEAM circuit for a Picaxe microcontroller.

It uses the classic seven segment displays, a PICAXE microcontroller and works with most engines. He’s released full source and PC board designs to boot.

For those interested in the electronics side, you’ll need a few key components: the 9g mini-servos, the SD21 servo driver, and the picaxe 18x microcontroller.